Insurgents struck the Iraqi capital Wednesday with at least a dozen attacks that targeted Shiite Muslim civilians, Iraqi security forces and American troops, killing more than 160 people in the deadliest day of violence in Baghdad since the U.S. invasion more than two years ago.
If the Iraqi insurgency is really an indigenous revolt against the American “occupation” then why are they killing Iraqis ? The answer, of course, is that this has nothing to do with American troops and everything to do with surpressing a nascent democracy in Iraq.
The group did not immediately assert direct responsibility for the attacks, but an Internet statement issued in its name welcomed the start of “revenge battles throughout the land of Mesopotamia.”
The statement linked the attacks to a U.S. and Iraqi offensive underway against insurgents in the northwestern city of Tall Afar and a subsequent audio recording attributed to Zarqawi that was posted on the Internet and accused the Shiite-led Iraqi government of having declared war on Sunnis in that city. As a result, al Qaeda in Iraq “has decided to launch a comprehensive war on the Shiites all over Iraq, wherever and whenever they are found. This is revenge. . . . Take care, because we are not going to have mercy on you,” the recording said, according to a translation by the Washington-based SITE Institute, a group that monitors radical Web sites.
Meanwhile, CNN.com is reporting that:
That claim was followed by the broadcast Wednesday of an audiotape of a man identified by the Al Arabiya network as Zarqawi declaring war on Shiites in Iraq.
“The al Qaeda organization in Iraq,” the voice said in Arabic, “has declared all-out war against Shiites in all of Iraq, wherever they are in Iraq.”
The voice, which CNN has not confirmed is Zarqawi’s, continues, “As for the government, servants of the crusaders headed by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, they have declared a war on Sunnis in Tal Afar. You have begun and started the attacks and you won’t see mercy from us.”
No connection between Iraq and al Qaeda huh ?
