In what has tragically become a commonplace event, today yet another car bomb exploded in Baghdad. The UK Guardian reports:
Baghdad bomb kills 22
At least 22 people were killed and 28 wounded when a car bomb exploded in a busy outdoor market in the Iraqi city of Baghdad today.
Iraqi police said the bomb exploded at 4.45pm local time in Dora, a south-west district of the city. It is believed the attack was aimed at a police patrol but missed its target.
The injured were taken to hospital where a source said the death toll could be much higher. Dora is one of the most dangerous parts of Baghdad, with car and roadside bombings occurring daily since a Sunni-dominated insurgency began in the summer of 2003.
Notice that a "Baghdad bomb" killed at least 22 Iraqi civilians today, and that "car and roadside bombings occur almost daily". In reading this account, you could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that "Baghdad bombs" have a life of their own and need no help from any human agency to wreak their bloody carnage. Perhaps the problem is that there is never any
reliable claim of responsibility for these attacks, and journalists and commentators are just mystified as Iraqi civilians about what kind of "Iraqi insurgent group" would deliberately kill their own neighbors - the very support base that they rely on to resist the American occupation.
The fact is that anonymous bombings that target civilians in the midst of a volatile society such as occupied Iraq is by no means a new phenomenon. All over the world over the past half century (and longer), wherever big Western governments had something to gain (or lose), bombs have been exploding and killing innocent civilians, leaving their friends and families not only traumatised, but completely confused as to
why such violence was committed against them.
