-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 5, 2007 5:35:31 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: McCain PhotoOp in Iraq, Selling His Candidacy, Caused
Death of 21 Civilians
Truck bomb kills Iraqi schoolchildren
James Hider in Baghdad
April 03, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/
0,20867,21496572-2703,00.html
"21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of
the capital. The victims were taken from the same Baghdad market
visited the previous day by US presidential candidate John McCain,
who announced that he was seeing signs of Bush's 'surge' security
plan working there."
A NEWBORN baby was one of at least 14 children and adults killed
today when a suicide bomber detonated a truck laden with explosives
close to a primary school in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
The latest massacre of Iraqi children came as 21 Shia market
workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital.
The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day
by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an
American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of
progress.
The Kirkuk bloodshed erupted when a bomber driving a truck full of
explosives hidden by sacks of flour targeted an Iraqi police
station that US soldiers were visiting. The full force of the blast
hit a nearby primary school.
Buthayna Mahmud, 10, was horrified to see the bodies of her
classmates strewn on the ground in flames.
“Everyone I saw was wearing the blue school uniform drenched with
blood. Some of their dresses were torn. I only saw fire. I heard
teachers and students shouting,” she said. “When we rushed out of
the school, we saw pupils on the ground, some of them burning.”
“We were at the last lesson and we heard the explosion. I saw two
of my classmates sitting near the window. They fell on the floor,
drenched in blood,” said Naz Omar, a girl in the fifth form. “They
could not speak. I was terrified. I said, ‘God is Great. I need my
mother. I need my father’.”
Terrified children fled the carnage in the ethnically mixed city of
Kurds, Turkomans and Arabs, many of whom were settled there by
Saddam Hussein in an attempt to “Arabicise” Kirkuk and “ethnically
cleanse” it of Kurds. Local observers said that the death toll
among the schoolchildren would have been worse if most of the
pupils had not been inside when the bomber struck.
Terrorists in Iraq have frequently killed large groups of children,
either while aiming at nearby American or Iraqi security forces or
as an end in itself. US forces said last month that two children
had been used by terrorists to sneak a car bomb through a
checkpoint and it had been detonated while they were still inside.
As well as the killings of the children and the Shia market
vendors, four people were blown up by another suicide bomber at a
police checkpoint in Baghdad, while a roadside bomb killed four
civilians in a Shia town just north of Baghdad. Yet another
roadside bomb killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded seven others near
the Iranian border. The US announced the deaths of six of its
soldiers at the weekend.
More than 600 Iraqis have been killed in the past week despite a US-
Iraqi security plan to quell violence in the capital. Most of the
killings have been the result of truck bombs outside Baghdad.
Mr McCain said that the situation was showing signs of improvement
and blamed waning support in the United States for the war on the
media, which were portraying an overly negative image of the crisis.
Kirkuk is seen as a potentially explosive fault line between
various ethnic and religious groups because it sits on a vast
reserve of crude oil and is claimed by the Kurds as part of their
autonomous northern region. Their claims have elicited fears from
Sunni Arabs that the Kurds and the Shia, who control the oil-rich
south, are trying to cut the once-powerful Sunni minority out of
the country’s mineral wealth.
-------------------
Remember, George Orwell
began as a war-reporter
http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070405/OPINION/
204050344/1030/OPINION
"McCain insisted that Iraq's streets and the outdoor market he just
toured were now plenty safe.
Huh? The market area was heavily guarded for this antiseptic
congressional visit -- a point Baghdad merchants derisively made to
a New York Times reporter.
"McCain seemed not to realize he'd only been performing in a one-
ring media circus."
Toledo Blade, April 5, 2007
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070405/
OPINION02/704050319/-1/OPINION
PRESIDENTIAL hopeful John McCain needs a new banner on his campaign
bus. The slogan "Straight Talk Express" he used in his first
presidential effort in 2000 doesn't fit the Arizona Republican
anymore.
The senator's rosy comments from Baghdad - even as bombs, rocket
attacks, snipers, and assassination attempts competed for attention
-- indicate straight talk is not really his strong suit. What his
remarks about progress being made in Iraq suggest is that the
lawmaker is still inexplicably carrying water for the Bush
Administration.
Contrast what Senator McCain said and what was happening the very
day his heavily guarded delegation took a tightly restricted "tour"
of Baghdad. While he was insisting that the administration's new
security plan was working and the media are not giving Americans
the full story, the U.S. military announced the deaths of six more
soldiers.
Four were killed responding to a bomb blast that had killed the
first two. On the same day, the U.S. military officials also
revealed that two unexploded suicide vests had been discovered
inside the super-fortified Green Zone, which houses many Iraqi
government installations and the U.S. embassy.
A rocket attack killed two Americans in the closely guarded enclave
the previous week. Only hours before Mr. McCain spoke, two senior
Iraqi politicians, both Sunnis, narrowly escaped an assassination
attempt in Baghdad.
Last month alone, more than 600 Iraqis were killed in sectarian
violence, mostly in a series of high-profile suicide bombings.
And there are heightened concerns over how thinly stretched the
U.S. military has become fighting simultaneous wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Just to maintain the administration's "surge" in Iraq,
the Pentagon said it planned to send another 9,000 troops to Iraq,
with about half of them returning to combat short of their promised
year at home.
With Iraq deteriorating so quickly, the military is under
increasing pressure to pour more troops into the conflict, ready or
not. Still, safely inside the Green Zone, the 70-year-old
Republican presidential candidate pronounced Baghdad safer and full
of "encouraging signs" that show "things are better."
As proof, Mr. McCain noted his drive into the city from the Baghdad
airport and a visit to a local marketplace both were uneventful.
What he didn't mention was that his congressional party, traveling
in armored military vehicles, was accompanied by heavily armed U.S.
troops on the ground, and guarded by U.S. helicopters overhead.
The senator fools no one with his skewed assessment of good news
from the war front. This is not "straight talk."
Tragically, Mr. McCain's cheerleading for the administration is
little more than a calculated political gamble in which he supports
the losing war policy in return for -- he hopes -- the Republican
nomination for president.
Perhaps his new slogan should be "White House-bound, whatever the
cost."
----------
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/wb/xp-111800
Sen. John McCain took a pleasant stroll through a Baghdad market to
prove that Americans aren't getting the full picture about the
"improving" security situation in Iraq's capital.
"Things are better. There are encouraging signs," McCain said in a
press conference after the April Fools' Day visit. The press
conference was held in the heavily fortified Green Zone.
Some Iraqis beg to differ. Karim Abdullah, a 37-year-old textile
merchant, said the visit by McCain and other members of Congress
wasn't exactly a reflection of reality.
"They were laughing and talking to people as if there was nothing
going on in this country or at least they were pretending that they
were tourists and were visiting the city's old market and buying
souvenirs," he said. "To achieve this, they sealed off the area,
put themselves in flak jackets and walked in the middle of tens of
armed American soldiers."
Actually, there were about 100 American soldiers in the market,
along with three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships
hovering above. American snipers prowled the rooftops.
McCain and the other visiting dignitaries removed their helmets,
but kept their flak jackets on.
See what's free at AOL.com.
www.ctrl.org
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