One can't help but wonder who is manufacturing the explosives that are creating so much havoc in the Middle East these days.
They now say that over 1,300 pounds of it were responsible for the big blast last evening in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan. The rising death toll at the site of that explosion, the five-star Marriott Hotel, has reached 57, including two Americans, with hundreds injured.
The incident took place only hours after the newly installed president, Asif Ali Zardari, gave his first speech to Parliament, an address in which he vowed to root out extremism.
This was the eighth major bombing in Pakistan over the past year.
On Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Yemen was the site of a well coordinated attack involving a car bomb and a gun battle which left 16 people dead. However, the security barriers eventually thwarted the attackers and no Americans were reported killed or injured.
There have also been at least seven bombings in Iraq today following a bloody week in Baghdad and elsewhere. Despite the carnage, however, Prime Minister Maliki continued to assert his independence from Washington and, according to the L.A. Times, is listening more to Iran.
Iran meanwhile was reported to have failed to resolve lingering questions about its alleged nuclear weapons research and a UN official described the situation as "a gridlock," and "at a dead end." At the same time, the nation's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, lashed out at Israel, saying that Iran and Israel were on a "collision course."
In an unusual week, the Department of Defense released the obituaries of six military personnel who died in Iraq, ranging in age from 19 to 53, and none of the deaths were reported to be combat-related. Two were killed by an American soldier, another died from a non-combat related shooting, one was killed in a vehicle accident and two died from illnesses.
Furthermore, a non-combat related helicopter crash outside Basra in southern Iraq claimed the lives of seven more U.S. troops early Thursday morning.
According to the web site www.icasualties.org, U.S. deaths in Iraq now stand at 4,168, including the seven victims of the helicopter crash, whose families are now being notified.
Last week, the Department of Defense also released the obituaries of five military personnel killed in Afghanistan, ranging in age from 22 to 46.
Total U.S. deaths in Afghanistan were 525 as of September 19, according to the Pentagon.
Because of the high number of veterans that are being discharged with undiagnosed mental health problems, senior physicians with the veterans' health system in Los Angeles have now told Admiral Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that there should be mandatory mental health screenings for all veterans mustering out from combat operations in the war zones.
According to an article in the L.A. Times, the doctors attributed the problem largely to the stigma that continues to be attached to combat stress disorders in the military. As a result, the afflicted veterans are carrying the problems with them into the civilian world, and, according to the doctors, the delayed diagnoses makes them more difficult to treat.
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Comments: 33
God bless us evry one...
I'm glad there are countries willing to stand up to these terrorists, I hope pakistan continues it efforts against these terrorists.
Thanks, Dave for your well written articles.
Maybe someone who wanted a haven for terrorists?
Think hard Dave, and then thank the U.S. and NATO troops who are willing to fight Al Qaeda and their allies in the Middle East so we don't have to fight them here.
Sorry, just read the following and need to get the word out: (check it out later)
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/165994-The-Dominionism-Apostasy-The-Despoiling-of-America-by-Christianity-turned-Evil
We can hope that Livni is able to form a government in Israel, which will allow diplomacy there to progress.
We can hope that Mbeki is quickly replaced in South Africa, and that the new administration does nothing to reverse the reconciliation aims that have been able to happen in that land.
We can hope that Zardari has a chance to establish his government in Pakistan, separate from the violence that took his wife.
We can hope the finance markets stabalize, removing another excuse for violence in the world ... at least for a while.
Had we not diverted our troops and our attention to Iraq but kept our eye on the ball in Afghanistan we might have kept Al Qaeda on the ropes instead of letting them regroup and recruit. Our ADD Middle East policies have created this problem, and, since violence begets violence, it will probably be plaguing us for some time to come. We get the government we deserve...darn it!
Of course -- I know what you'll do: keep blaming "neocon idiots".
A dollar to a hole in the ground, we are the ones manufacturing the bomb materials. This is common. We shipped arms to Iran. We provided the "resistance," meaning Al Qaeda, with weapons in Afghanistan. We gave Saddam weapons of mass destruction which he used on his own people! So if those bombs have our fingerprints all over them I would consider ti business as usual.
Al Qaeda is going to row their boats across the ocean and attack us if we go home? I don't think so. They have other interests besides damaging the US, although that is one they like. They would like to solidify and leverage their control and influence in their own region.
But we are the big guy on the block and everyone wants a piece of the big guy. So it will remain, as that goes with being the big, pushy and egotistical big buy!
When we look back and Viet Nam and Afghanistan, Russia's Viet Nam, I really wonder what is the point of all of this? It almost does not matter who the terrorists are, the simple existence of this kind of thing anywhere in this world terrorizes all of us.
Look at why the Russians went into Afghanistan, and why we went there. They were asked by the government to help with the Mujahadeen rebels, to put down the radical Islamists.
Why is so much money, energy and lives going into trying to screw the Russians over when we should have been on the same side of that issue.
Read "Charlie Wilson's War" and it is as though we are fighting Russians in Afghanistan just for spite. This endless stupid football game that we cheer for in one decade and the Russians cheer for the next decade and that ruins life for so many millions of people on this planet, and surely does no good for the planet itself ... there has to be a better way, there just has to.
We and the Russians were allies in WWII. It is said the Nazis were supported in Europe by the US and Britain as a counter to the Russians. The people in charge even back then seem to not care one bit about what they do to the world as long as they can keep this phoney chess game going for their benefit.
Sorry Bill, there is no way I deserve, or any of us deserve this sham BS group of criminals in Washington.
I would not be surprised if the people in charge of the West, since they have lost Christianity and religion as a social control, have decided to let Islam, a much better system for terrorizing and controlling people migrate to here so they have something to replace the shambles we have made of democracy.
The way to control the world is to breed masses of ignorant people who can be herded and stampeeded over anyone trying to have a reasonable discussion to create a reasonable concenus ... those who own everything would obviously see the world destroyed before they would give it up.
...until you search out the details...
And no one in the Bush administration has ever considered the Iraqis were important enough to keep track of, so we never have had nor do we now have a solid or even rough idea of the level of casualties.
The low estimate, which happens to be by the U.S. puts Iraqi deaths in total, since the beginning, at under 100,000 for example.
At the other end of the scale, a scientific sampling by a British polling firm put the deaths at well over one million.
I wish Republicans would stop blaming Democrats for our mess ("Democrat inaction in Congress") when the Republicans have been rubber stamping every idiotic and illegal move this Administration has made. For the past two years the Democrats, feckless though they can be, have not had anything like enough of a majority to do anything the Republicans decided to block. Which is just about everything. The charge is absurd, but consistent with the Republican strategy of running against themselves.
"Al Qaeda is going to row their boats across the ocean and attack us if we go home? I don't think so."
WTC 9-11,
And we are not just the "big guy on the block" we are the great satan.
We're doing that as fast as we can! Unfortunately.