Situation in Iraq could not be worse, "The Country Will Not Survive"!

[leftchick]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/266162_iraqsurvival11.html


BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A cruel and bloody civil war has started in Iraq, a country that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to free from fear and establish democracy. I have been visiting Iraq since 1978, but for the first time, I am becoming convinced that the country will not survive.

Three suicide bombers disguised themselves as women Friday and, with explosives hidden by long black cloaks, killed 79 people and wounded more than 160 when they blew themselves up in a Shiite mosque in the capital. One bomber came through the women's security checkpoint at the Buratha mosque in northern Baghdad and detonated explosives just as worshippers were leaving at the end of Friday prayers.

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I have been covering the war in Iraq ever since it began three years ago and I have never seen the situation so grim. More than a week ago, I was in the northern city of Mosul, protected by 3,000 Kurdish soldiers, but even so it was considered too dangerous to send out patrols in daytime. It is safer at night because of a curfew.

In March alone, the U.S. military said 1,313 people were killed in sectarian attacks. Many bodies, buried in pits or thrown in the rivers, are never found.

The real figure is probably twice as high. All over the country people are on the move as Sunnis and Shiites flee each other's areas.

:cry:



Iraqi Shiite women weep as their families pack their belongings after being ordered to leave by unidentified militants Monday April 10, 2006, near Buhriz, a former Saddam stronghold about 60 kilometers (35 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq. Growing violence in the neighborhoods of Baghdad as well as other Iraqi cities has driven thousands to abandon their homes to live in camps in relatively safer areas.(AP Photo/Mohammed Hamed)