Despite our best hopes, Iraq still remains unsafe for the Iraqi people. A Washington Post story recounts the recent terror:
Insurgents have answered hopes for a post-election calm with a wave of carnage, capping two days of violence with a suicide bombing Saturday in front of a hospital south of Baghdad that killed 17 people.
The car bombing was the deadliest attack on a day that included the discovery of 12 bodies in the northern city of Mosul; a fierce firefight between U.S. troops and insurgents, also in Mosul; and the killing of a prominent judge in Basra, in far southeastern Iraq.
The photo accompanying the Post story shows "An Iraqi policeman guards the scene of a car bombing near a hospital in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad. The blast killed 17 and wounded 15." The odd thing is that the policeman is hiding his identity with a ski mask. Is he an undercover officer not seeking to reveal himself, or are conditions so dangerous that even police officers must hide their identities for fear of assassination? Whichever the answer, the current conditions faced by the people of Iraq because of the insurgency are obviously intolerable.