11 July 2005

BAGHDAD: People in Baghdad, enduring yet another day of bloodshed of their own, condemned last week's London bombings but said US and British policy was to blame.

"I don't justify the attacks in London. But I believe it's a reaction against US-British policy towards our countries in the Third World," said Mawel Ahmed, 38, a computer salesman, as he made his way to work in the capital on Sunday.

"I wish that the big countries reconsider their policies and realise that violence can only generate more violence. The political solution is the correct way to solve all problems."

Television footage of Britons grieving their losses prompted fellow feeling among Iraqis.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, installed after an election secured by foreign forces, offered condolences and solidarity in the fight against "terrorism".

But people on the streets of Baghdad also urged the United States and Britain, who together invaded Iraq two years ago, to look at the causes of the violence.

"The British government must be held responsible for the attack against its people," said Salman al-Qudsi, a supermarket owner.

"The British alliance with the United States was the reason that this happened. I condemn terrorism in all its guises. What happened to the British people is terrorism. The question is who began this terrorism and who encouraged it?"

Iraqis are all too familiar with the kind of suffering inflicted on Britons on Thursday, when bombs suspected of being the work of al Qaeda ripped through London's transport network and killed at least 50 people.

Intensive British police investigations and painstaking forensic examinations of the blast sites, continuing days later, contrast starkly with the cursory clear-up operations that follow routine devastation in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

A BOMB EVERY DAY

The Iraq wing of al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on an Iraqi army recruiting depot in Baghdad which killed at least 21 people.

In Baghdad alone, suicide car bombings are running at a rate of about one a day – half what it was a month ago. On Sunday, there were at least four other suicide attacks across Iraq.

Many Iraqis, even those glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein, blame the United States for the violence and some harbour suspicions that instability and potential sectarian warfare in Iraq are in fact policy goals for Washington and its allies.

They accuse US President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of turning their country into a haven for militants like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq.

Offering a glimpse into the startling conspiracy theories that thrive in the crisis atmosphere of Baghdad, one university professor, who insisted that he not be identified for fear of reprisal attacks, found an unlikely candidate to blame:

"I'm against any attack that is aimed at killing innocent civilians," the academic said as he laboured, perspiring over a broken electricity generator at his home.

"This is all the work of the Freemasons who stand in the face of Islam and stop it through their agents Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi, who claim to speak in the name of Islam."

Many Iraqis have not forgiven the United States and Britain for pressing the United Nations to keep sanctions on Iraq for 12 years, and some say the London blasts were proof that tough economic penalties and the war that followed had backfired.

"Do you not think that economic pressure and sanctions on countries is terror?" said Qudsi, the shopkeeper. "They are responsible for all this and they have to accept its results."

What was the context of these comments? If he was referring to an organisational link to Iraq that'd put things in a whole diferent light. If he meant iraq ALONE again a different slant...

What faults does the poster feel were there with the preperations for an attack and how do they contradict the previous statement?

I'd've tried to plug the gaps myself but I couldn't corroborate any of the quotes via Google...

Why would Kennedy distance himself from a war that the libdems oppose?

 http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2003-03-18&number=118

 http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2003-03-18&number=117

For that matter can you post evidence of "FUnny how the polititians have been so quick to point the finger at 'Muslim extremists' yet seem to be at pains to distance the bombing from any connection to the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq."

Thanks

I agree on CK but Ben and i c should join the club too.

Of course there is a LINK, but the one is not the CAUSE of the other. The ongoing terrorism is the work of those who would have Iraq returned to the darkness under Sad Huss. People like you believe their propaganda and become the pawns of religious extremists.

The ignorance of you people is unbelievable.

Chrles Kennedy is a dick? What? You've just noticed that well known fact?

tony blair is a lying murderous dick
george bush is a genocidal halfwit dick