[link|http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20031027/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq|So does this mean the Red Cross should ask themselves why?]

Excerpt:

"We feel helpless when see this," a distraught Iraqi doctor said at the devastated Red Cross offices. The Red Cross said 12 Iraqis were killed at its office, including two employees.

Baghdad's al Baya'a police station in the al-Doura neighborhood saw the most deaths, reportedly 15 including the American. Since Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1, 113 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire.

Gen. Ibrahim blamed foreign fighters for the assault, saying a fifth, aborted car bombing was attempted by a man captured with a Syrian passport. "Some countries, unfortunately, are trying to send people to conduct attacks," the deputy interior minister said, without naming those nations.

That fifth bomber was kept by officers from detonating his Land Cruiser at a station in the "New Baghdad" district. "He was shouting, `Death to the Iraqi police! You're collaborators!'" said police Sgt. Ahmed Abdel Sattar.

In Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, witnesses said American troops opened fire, killing at least four Iraqi civilians, after a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S. military convoy passed. The U.S. command did not immediately confirm the incident.

At the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in central Baghdad, witnesses said a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed vehicle, apparently an ambulance, right up to security barriers outside the building at about 8:30 a.m. The vehicle detonated, blowing down the Red Cross's front wall, devastating the interior and blowing shrapnel and debris over a wide area.

Then, in quick succession, explosions went off at the al-Baya'a, al-Shaab and al-Khadra police stations. Ambulances, sirens wailing, crisscrossed the city all morning.

"From what our indications are, none of those bombers got close to the target," U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling said. But the explosions outside police stations left streetscapes of broken, bloody bodies and twisted, burning automobiles.

Hertling said he believed the attacks may have been timed with the start of Ramadan to heighten tensions during the fasting month, when Muslims abstain from food and drink during daylight hours.



Near the three-story ICRC building, cigarette vendor Ghani Khadim, 50, said he saw an Iraqi ambulance approach the small compound some 100 yards away. The explosion blew out windows and injured his wife and daughter in his house behind his stand, he said.

The vehicle had stopped some 60 feet in front of the Red Cross headquarters, "at a line of barrels we have had in front to protect the building," one Red Cross employee, who would not give his name.

The blast knocked down a 40-foot section of the ICRC front wall, demolished a dozen cars and apparently broke a water main, flooding the streets.

The inside of the building was heavily damaged, littered with shattered glass, doors blown off their hinges, toppled bookcases and collapsed ceilings. A gaping crack had opened in a back wall, some 100 yards from the blast site, where a crater some five yards across quickly filled with water.

The Red Cross staff member said someone began firing off an automatic weapon immediately after the explosion \ufffd "100 bullets or more." He said he believed it was a gunmen somehow associated with the bomber "who wanted to scare people more."

ICRC staffers said about 25 people were present at the offices at 8:30 a.m.

"Of course we don't understand why somebody would attack the Red Cross," Red Cross spokeswoman Nada Doumani said. "The Red Cross has operated in this country since 1980, and we have not been involved in politics."

In Geneva, Red Cross spokesman Florian Westphal said the ICRC had disclosed in August that it had received warnings of a threat and had been reducing its staff since a Sri Lankan staffer was killed July 22 south of Baghdad.

"It's a big shock," Westphal said. "It is obviously impossible to move onto a normal day's business, so we really have to step back and take stock."

Two buildings away, the explosion devastated the interior of the Al-Nawal private polyclinic operated by Dr. Jamal F. Massa, 53, who had been planning to open it as a full-fledged hospital next month.

"We feel helpless when we see this," he said. He said he couldn't understand why the Red Cross was targeted. "This only hurts guards and other Iraqis."

The Red Cross and other international aid organizations had reduced their Baghdad staffs after the car bombing of U.N. headquarters Aug. 19, in which 23 people died.

Mouwafak al-Rabii, a Shiite Muslim member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, said the United States must speed up the training of Iraqi police and soldiers and employ ruthless measures to crush the insurgency.

I say:

Syrian passports. That mean they're not "the Iraqi People" or even "Iraqi people" by any reasonable definition. But they *are* Baathists. Syria is a Ba'athist regime. They're also consummate weasels. I say we bump them up on the list.

Compare and contrast the hotel attack with the UN headquarters attack. I'll give them points for daring. But such a radical difference in the respective death tolls means the hotel was not that soft a target. (Still softer than it should have been, though. They need to be more careful about the staff they hire.)

Note well the nihilism of their choice of targets. They're not strictly confining themselves to soft targets. But they certainly do prefer to prey on the weak, no matter how much they have to stretch logic to concoct a grievance against them. Beating up on the Red Cross? What assholes.

Al Qeada and company are trying to fight this like Vietnam. The trouble for them is, *we're* not fighting it like Vietnam. There's very little nonsense from the administration about "limited war." Such as there is comes from the State Department, which is slowly but surely becoming marginalized. From the decision makers, it's "they can run but they can't hide" rhetoric. And they seem to mean it.

It's not quite a world war. But it's close. And it was that way from the beginning. The spoiled Saudi brats attacked us from eight time zones away. And now we're taking it to the enemy, wherever the enemy may be.

Say, I heard a rumor that the missiles used to pockmark that hotel were French, and they were modern. Wouldn't surprise me if it turns out to be true.