Maybe they were miffed about being bumped from the headlines and news shows for a few weeks by Hurricane Katrina.Am I the only one who finds it hard to take seriously Lynch's claim that "democracy equals failure" for the insurgents?
Whatever their twisted motivation, terrorists have renewed their horrible work on several fronts in Iraq this week .... The body count is staggering.
On Wednesday, 160 people were killed and nearly 600 wounded in a dozen coordinated bombings over a nine-hour span in Baghdad. Another 17 people were executed in a village north of the capital. There were a half-dozen attacks on U.S. forces that left 10 soldiers wounded as Iraq went through its second-bloodiest day since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the country's dictatorship in March 2003.
... For Americans, focused for the past few weeks on the domestic disaster Katrina, the explosion of violence is a grim reminder of the unsettled and dangerous situation facing U.S. troops in Iraq. American military spokesman Maj. Gen. Richard Lynch said the trouble was actually "predictable" with the referendum approaching on the constitution.
"Remember," he said, "democracy equals failure for the insurgency."
... The success of the latest attacks ... further undermines the international credibility of the new Iraqi government, which has yet even to gain much acceptance in the Arab world. Not a single Arab nation has opened an embassy in Iraq since the U.S.-backed government was installed.
The Iraqis say the old-line Arab regimes are afraid of democracy. Perhaps they are just plain afraid.
After all, wasn't there an Iraqi election in late January -- an election that, if pulled off successfully, was supposed to deal a crushing blow to the insurgency?
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