Iraq disaster goes on......and on

The disaster that Bush and Blair unleashed when they blundered into Iraq a decade ago shows no sign of abating.   Yesterday at least a dozen people, mainly Shia pilgrims, were killed in a series of bombings across the country.

No one has claimed responsibility, but Sunni militants, some of whom have links to al-Qaeda, have been blamed for much of the recent violence.   On Wednesday, more than 40 people were killed by bombs.

According to the authoritative independent Iraq Body Count monitoring group, last year 4,471 civilians were killed, an increase on 2011.   Every week on average, there are 18 bombings in the country.

Relations between Sunnis and Shias appear to get worse by the day.  Under Saddam Hussein, the Sunnis ruled the roost.     Since the invasion, they feel they have been marginalised and they have begun staging strikes and sit-ins.

* http://lagotafria.blogspot.com.es/  2nd blog on this page discusses my Historia Mundial de los desastres

Goodbye Iraq - Part 94

Today the last US combat brigade left Iraq. Now the only Americans left are a few “advisers” – all right, 50,000 of them if you want to be pedantic. What a disaster they and the British Labour government that so foolishly helped them are leaving behind.

Earlier this week, a suicide bomb outside an Iraqi army recruiting centre in Baghdad killed at least 59 people. July was the most violent month for two years, though the Americans contest the figure of more than 530 killed. This denial represents progress of a kind. For a long time the American and British authorities were profoundly uninterested in how many Iraqi civilians were killed. This means we have had to rely on unofficial estimates, like the one from Iraq Body Count which reckons the figure is around 100,000.

Five months after the Iraqi elections, there is still no government. An ethnically and religiously divided country has patently dissolved into enemy factions, with the promise of more death and destruction.

Labour constantly told us that invading Iraq would make Britain more secure. Well, before we launched our attack, al-Qaeda were a nonentity there – you see they were Saddam Hussein’s enemy too. Now they are a power, and, many fear, a growing one. And still none of the conspirators who conjured up this disastrous war has said “sorry”. (Use the search button to find many earlier Iraq blogs.)