Grisley Body Counts Still Found in "Peaceful" Iraq

So today we have numbers to add to the true total of deaths that General Petraeus should have reported to Congress in September after a grave of 15 female students was found in the al-Ehaimer area of Diyala Province, northeast of Baqubah, which is under the control of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Elsewhere in Diyala yesterday, a suicide bomber on a bicycle blew up 32 other police recruits at morning rollcall. 18 others were also injured, including a mother and her child. Other violent attacks occurred across Iraq, including a car bombing of a bus terminal in Kirkuk that killed 8 and wounded 25. Also in that city, armed men kidnapped the managing editor of the Turkmen magazine al-Akhaa, Qasim Muhammad Sari Kahiyah. You know he's going to die. A roadside bomb in Iskandariyah on Saturday, killed three 30 miles from Baghdad.

How much confidence can the Iraqis have in their central government if their Prime Minister might not even be able to toss Blackwater to the curb sometime this year? The death toll since the "success" of the surge was proclaimed in Washington certainly isn't reasuring. Last Wednesday, 25 died in bombings, including 9 police officers, in attacks that included a explosive-laden sewege truck. One killed two Iraqi soldiers and four civilians at an Iraqi army checkpoint, and another killed an Iraqi police cheif in Mosul. An Iraqi Sunni tribal leader and his son were gunned down west of Baghdad for recently siding with American troops. 2 civilians were killed in a bombing in Zaafaraniyah, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad. Shiite extremists are being changed to an increasing threat in classified campaign strategy for the Iraq, by Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, which covers the period through summer 2009. Not that it's news to us but, their plan also acknowledges that the U.S. military cannot guarantee a wholesale defeat of its enemies in Iraq, and instead is seeking "political accommodation" to persuade them to end the use of violence.