The senior officer who met with reporters in Baghdad said there had been 21 car bombings in the capital in May, and 126 in the past 80 days. All last year, he said, there were only about 25 car bombings in Baghdad.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There have been bombings by extremists. They are not representatives of Islam. They're not representative of the vast majority of people who love this country, but nonetheless, they exist.
In late 2009, I returned to Baghdad after a lengthy absence. I was living alone, in the Hamra Hotel, the twice bombed-out de facto international news bureau.
Less than a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Qaida attacks were continuing: the firebombing of a synagogue in Tunisia in April, a bomb outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi in June.
In a country with millions of people and cars going everywhere, the enemy is going to get a car bomb out there once in awhile.
At least 23,000 civilians have also died in the Iraqi killing field and the U.S. is stuck in a quagmire.
There are 40,000 Iraqi police on duty around the country. If they detect an attack about to happen, the police are the ones who are supposed to stop it.
The suicide bombers who struck London on 7 July 2005 killed 52 innocent people and wounded hundreds more. All of them must live with their memories. And the rest of us will always remember where we were when we heard that London had been hit by the worst terrorist attack in its history.
Well, I've been to Iraq twice now. I was in Baghdad in June and then north of Baghdad in November.
Last night the United States dropped four 2,000 pound bombs on Saddam Hussein. I don't know anything about explosives, but, my God, do those things even need to explode?
The Iraqi government will try and retake some of the cities have that been captured by ISIS. That means the Shiite government dropping bombs on civilian areas, on Sunni cities. There will likely be a response with car bombings here in Baghdad, and this could be a long fight.