More Baghdad Violence

These are the kind of events that drive Americans crazy. The militias are nothing less than mafiosi thugs on twelve hundred year old vendettas. As if to drive a point home, the wife, Mrs Buzz asks, "can we blame the Democrats now that they have congress?"
(She knows...she knows...not till January. And even then, the rest of history will be all Bush's fault.) We need to remember that 9/11 is part of that same mentality that uses language like "crusader" and "infidel" to justify killing thousands of innocents at a time. Blaming ANYTHING American for the actions of fanatic cold-blooded killers is stupidity brought to an awesome degree.

Three suicide car bombers and two mortar attacks shook Baghdad's Sadr City Shiite slum Thursday afternoon, killing at least 144 people and wounding 236 others, many of them seriously, police said.
The bombs and mortar shells struck at 15 minute intervals beginning about 3 p.m., with the first suicide bombing striking a vegetable market.
Angry residents and armed militiamen flooded the streets hurling curses at Sunni Muslims. Police said the death toll was expected to rise significantly.
flavored beans to Drudge

Some historical scenarios just need to be allowed to play out. All Iraqi's, by now, understand what our goals in Iraq are. Some Iraqi's have other goals. But from what I get from sources I deem reliable is that, far and away, most citizens agree with the U.S., and have bought into the plan. Which, horribly, makes them vulnerable to an early coalition withdrawal. Victory has always been our only exit plan. It wasn't as easy as we would have liked, but anyone who thinks the violence will abate with "re-deployment" is an idiot. There is enormous propaganda value in attacks like this, and to top it off, morons get to kill a few more innocents.
I don't know why the Health Ministry is such a "high value target" for Sunnis (assuming that's who carried out these attacks) except that its minister is a Shiite, an Al-Sadr ally.

The raid came weeks after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, ordered the U.S. military to lift a blockade of the sprawling east Baghdad grid of streets lined with tumbledown concrete block structures and vacant lots.

American forces had sealed the district for several days looking for kidnapped U.S. soldier Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old reservist from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was visiting his Iraqi wife in Baghdad on Oct. 23 when he was handcuffed and abducted by suspected rogue gunmen from the Mahdi Army.

Al-Sadr is a major political backer of al-Maliki, who had rejected American demands to disband the heavily armed militias and their death squads, which have carried out a brutal campaign of revenge attacks on Iraq's Sunni minority in a cycle of violence following the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine.

I think this story's representation of the missing soldier is misleading, so here's a better one from WTOP, in DC.
Of course, no "news story" is complete without this:

So far this month, 52 American service members have been killed or died.