The insurgents are now using mentally disabled women as suicide bombers. Though suicide bombers may not be the right word, since the women don't seem to have known they were carrying bombs. I don't know why this seems worse than just killing a lot of innocent people, but it does.
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Well, you can just divide the number of dead by 3 or 4, like you did when you wrote that only 150,000 Iraqi's died in the war.
Is it that much different than using adolescent boys? Is there such a thing as a mentally "abled" suicide bomber?
Regardless, I agree. Truly horrible.
I gasped this morning when I heard it.
Although the most disgusting story involved Michael Yon's reporting....I don't even feel like writing it.
In a strange horrible way this is good news; this is how an insurgency dies. Just like the Jordanians became repelled by Zarquawi after the bombing of the wedding reception there so Iraqis will find the tactics repulsive.
The article on the surge in our favorite magazine is required reading for this course.
It's not the first time something similar has been in the news. For instance, the unsuccessful bombing attack on Bhutto involved a 1-year-old child.
The Palistinians used a donkey once, too. They got a nasty letter from PETA for that.
I agree that, for some weird reason, this seems even more cruel than the usual suicide bombing business. I don't know why - perhaps we as humans instinctively feel the need to protect the weak, and this is the lowest form of abuse I can imagine. More than anything else, it goes down as another example of man's inhumanity toward man.
Worse yet, this barbaric state of war looks to continue and we're all made the worse for it. I truly hope that it is true that horrific acts like this lead to a broad revulsion with the horror and dark logic of war. But I'm not holding my breath. Hutus slaughtered their Tsusu neighbors with machetes to the count of nearly 1 million, and the violence didn't end. And the sectarian civil war in Iraq looks be at least aa dangerous and long-lived.
I hate to indulge in euphamism, but just like other bombings involving children and animals, I wouldn't deign to call this a suicide bombing. In those cases, every casualty is an innocent victim
Rickm wrote: Well, you can just divide the number of dead by 3 or 4, like you did when you wrote that only 150,000 Iraqi's died in the war.
Out of curiosity, is there an actual human inside you somewhere? I mean, you may style yourself as one of them caring and concerned progressive types, but if your attitude causes you to post that in response to an apparently-genuine expression of measured anguish, then it's doubtful you're anything other than a hateful little troll.
Seems to me that if our enemies are getting desperate, then whatever we are doing is working and we shouldn't stop. That doesn't mean we should't continue to improve our methods and tactics.
While I hope that our military continues to work to protect innocents and target our true enemies, I do not think it's time for us to walk away and declare that we're finished fighting. That would tell the terrorists, who are, in fact, our enemies, that we can be defeated if they just fight dirty enough.
"Is it that much different than using adolescent boys? Is there such a thing as a mentally "abled" suicide bomber?"
I think there is a real difference between using the mentally disabled and teenage boys or others. Teenage boys may not always exhibit the best judgment in the world, but they are not mentally disabled. And I don't think it's fair say that anyone who becomes a suicide bomber is mentally disabled. People have passionate committments to their beliefs to such an extent that killing the infidels or their collaborators makes sense to them. Obviously, these people do not think the same way that you are I do. Their motivations are hard for us to comprehend, but they are not mentally disabled.
Megan: shouldn't you have titled your post "Muhammad?"
One other thought: shouldn't the title to this post be "Muhammed" instead of "Jesus"?
As horrible as it is, maybe the fact that they used someone who was mentally incapacitated means that they're having difficulty finding those of sound mind who are willing to make that kind of 'sacrifice'?
Jack,
You're right. I prefer the NY Post's term "Homicide Bomber".
Rick, that's a completely different point and the same silly semanticism I don't like. Suicide bombers are literally attacking by committing suicide by the bomb. The suicide aspect makes weapon delivery and concealment possible, ergo the phrase "suicide bomber" is a very useful term to describe a specific criminal modus operandi.
"Homicide bomber" is dumb for several reasons, the fact that it's a goofy Post "freedom fries" inspired neologism first. Secondly it applies to every type of bomber and tells you nothing about the attack. "Homicide bomb attack kills 20 in Baghdad market"--was it dropped from a plane? Fired from a cannon, smuggled under a robe, left in a backpack? Thirdly, it completely misses the point of why this incident is disgusting. These women committed no crime. They are homicide victims, not homicide bombers!
How reliable is this info?
Sounds apocryphal.
Insurgents?? why not use the term "terrorists"?
I like the term "Splodey-Dopes"
Not for the unwitting mentally handicapped ones, though... they are just victims.
Homicide bombers? That's the sort of terrorist that the USA supported in Britain and Ireland. Quite a different case.
Bert Adams makes an important point. How is this "insurgency" exactly? They just blew up a bunch of civilians at markets. Was it "insurgency" when this same type of thing happened in Oklahoma City, or in New York on 9/11? Clearly nobody talks that way about terrorist bombings that don't occur in Iraq. But in Iraq, every mass murder - no matter of whom, or by whom, or how pointless and nihilistic - gets verbally promoted into honorary status as part of some sort of "insurgency". Why is that?
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that leaving Iraq now as Senator Obama says would leave the people of Iraq to be ruled by such forces and anyone identified as having stood in opposition would be murdered.
Why on earth is this surprising to anyone? It's not at all the first time the moojies have exploited the mentally handicapped to carry out bombings
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6889106/
If it is surprising to anyone, it's only because that person has been sheltered from knowing the brutality of our enemies.
Oh, and here's an example in Palestine/Israel: http://youtube.com/watch?v=PPU4UN03t7E&feature=related
Oh, and just because they got two handicapped women to be their mules for these attacks doesn't mean it's any harder than it ever was to find people to do them. It just means they were able to get their hands on two handicapped women.
They'd much rather use these women than an able-minded operative, who are expensive and time consuming to recruit and bring into Iraq.
Using these women is also less risky than their usual tactic of abducting a family and sending one member out with a bomb vest to carry out an attack telling him if he doesn't carry out the attack the moojies will kill his whole family. (After having a little fun with his wife and daughters, that is.)
We've found them chained to their car bombs.
One news outlet calls this latest attack "unthinkable."
That's because they're stupid.
The moojies will use the handicapped any time they have a chance.
On the plus side, it does suggest that the terrorists are having a harder time recruiting people to willingly carry out suicide attacks.
Typical McArdle hypocrisy. She isn't troubled by the three million who died in Cambodia after we left, she is blithely unconcerned about the thousands of Vietnamese who were sent to re-education camps or who drowned as boat people, but she is shocked, shocked by our adversaries in Iraq. Nonetheless, she recommends immediate withdrawal and surrender, followed perhaps by a sharp note to the UN about how wrong it is to kill three million people.
The NYT says Iraqi forces claimed the women were mentally disabled but offered no conclusive evidence. It seems perfectly believable they were, but what is the evidence for the claim? It's classic for any government to claim its opponents are mentally unstable or disabled -- the Soviets said this about Sakharov, the Vietnamese say it about Father Ly, and so on.
Suicide bombings aimed at civilians are disgusting and revolting enough either way, though I agree that if the "mules" are mentally disabled they're even more horrifying.
For me, one big reason that this is worst than a normal suicide attack is that everyone who died was an innocent victim. If a suicide bombing kills x amount of people, this kills x+1 amount of innocent people. It's bad enough to kill someone. It's even worse to take advantage of their mental condition or disability in doing so. It's much worse to kill such a person in a way that turns their body and their last moments into a vessel of death for other innocents.
y81, do you ever realize you peddle in strawmen or do you really think that way? That's just sad.
Be careful using "Jesus" in any context when talking about Iraq. Bill Maher leaps on any reference to religion when discussing the Middle East, and as the self-anointed Swiftian hipster, he'll likely mock the use of the mentally retarded as bombers by linking, somehow, their exploitation to religious fanaticism.
This isn't new. And it virtually never has anything to do with religion.
Children used as sex slaves in Thailand, the handicapped smuggling drugs in from Mexico, young boys wielding machetes in the Sudan - tragically, using the weakest to keep the strong in power is nothing new.
Take the building of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad by First Kuwaiti. They're using slave labor to build our embassy.
Back to the hipster pundits -
Ann Counter and her homunculus friend Maher are making a living making jokes about very serious subjects. Think he'll not exploit the use of these poor women as bombers? Don't bet on it. Think he'll link it to religion? Bet on it.
Be careful using "Jesus" in any context when talking about Iraq. Bill Maher leaps on any reference to religion when discussing the Middle East, and as the self-anointed Swiftian hipster, he'll likely mock the use of the mentally retarded as bombers by linking, somehow, their exploitation to religious fanaticism.
This isn't new. And it virtually never has anything to do with religion.
Children used as sex slaves in Thailand, the handicapped smuggling drugs in from Mexico, young boys wielding machetes in the Sudan - tragically, using the weakest to keep the strong in power is nothing new.
Take the building of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad by First Kuwaiti. They're using slave labor to build our embassy.
Back to the hipster pundits -
Ann Counter and her homunculus friend Maher are making a living making jokes about very serious subjects. Think he'll not exploit the use of these poor women as bombers? Don't bet on it. Think he'll link it to religion? Bet on it.
I'm not sure what about this is news: People who put bombs in crowded places are, well, not very nice folks. They're the kind of folks who'd blow up a bunch of strangers going about their business, to make a political point, spread terror, impress their fellow jihadis, whatever. This particular story (assuming it's true; it could also be an atrocity story being made up to influence US or Iraqi public opinion) doesn't make me think any worse of these guys than I already did. (Similarly, when Tim McVeigh was unrepentant about blowing up a building full of people, I didn't see why anyone was especially outraged. Not only is he a mass murderer, but he's also an a--hole. Well, what a shock.)
ISTM that each new attack leads people who want to pull out (like me, FWIW) to the conclusion that we should pull out soon, while it leads people who want to stay in to the conclusion that we don't dare pull out now. At this point, more bombings of civilians provides no new information on that point.
The fact that it 'seems worse' (which I agree, it does) may indicate that on some level most of us, whatever our political stripe, kinda-sorta respect the suicide bomber. After all, he has a 'cause', is apparently sincere, and we respect that. Some of us even believe we agree with the 'cause' - so much the better.
But having an unwitting or handicapped person be the bomber removes the figlead of piety that allows so many to paper over these acts themselves and jump right into politics. It's just a mass murder orchestrated by unseen sociopaths, not something anyone can pretend is an act of piety or political protest. So it 'seems worse'.
Many here have pointed out that it's really not substantively different than other such bombings, and doesn't really give us new information, and I agree with that. What is different is our attitude toward the act, in particular the absence of any possibility of romanticization of it.
"the insurgents"?
Meaning what?
Presumably, I'll grant you, a mentally disabled person isn't the one planning a suicide bombing run.
But this is a country that has been self-segregating on ethnic/religious lines for years, is chock full of people who hate each other almost as much as they hate us, apparently has a rule of law somewhat analogous to the American Old West, albeit with much better weaponry (except when American senators go shopping with a full platoon of guards and personal body armor) and a constant flow of scum and villiany pouring in from all over the place, and has put in place a Darwinian evolution of what are euphemistically referred to as "improvised exploding devices", meaning in reality stuff that your average Eagle Scout could cobble together from a kitchen cabinet.
So pardon my French, but who are you calling f***ing insurgents? Is there some cold, calculating, ruthless invisible hand out there in the desert that has every bullet path mapped out with the precision and accuracy of a Tom Brady spiral? Are you seriously trying to imply that really, it's all going according to the evil plans of a towel-headed mastermind that has an agenda that makes Yassir Arafat's look like a United Way drive?
Jesus indeed; don't you think before you write?
I agree that, for some weird reason, this seems even more cruel than the usual suicide bombing business.
Szr, I think it is probably the additional element of treachery and abuse of the weak.
I really wish there were some way for our society to disengage from the evil, murderous, forces which consume the societies of the Persian Gulf, but there isn't, and there hasn't been, for about eighty years now. When your citizens absolutely demand what lies beneath the feet of the people in region x, then your citizens are going to be up to their necks in the conflicts which consume the people in region x. The only thing which has changed in the past few decades is that some factions in region x have obtained increasingly more efficient means to export their conflicts.
As tempting as it is to some to advocate simply turning away from this mess, in response to seeing barbarism like this, it simply cannot be done. We are in it up to our necks, as long as our material well being is strongly supported by stuff that gets pumped out below the feet of folks who would send mentally disabled people with bombs to kill other folks.
Albatross - Similarly, when Tim McVeigh was unrepentant about blowing up a building full of people, I didn't see why anyone was especially outraged.
He did have regret about the day care center. He said later that he knew there would be some "collateral damage" of innocents along with the IRS, FBI, DEA, and US Marshall people he targeted but he didn't know about the children and wished he could have changed plans to bomb the place when the kids were out on a field trip or something...Then he said that if there was no way to avoid it, he still would have bombed because kids died at Waco, too. A monster, but not totally without conscience...
The revulsion I have for the radical Muslims in this matter of using two mentally handicapped women as bombers, if true, is that in ISlam as well as in Judeo-Christian thinking, the retarded are held to be sin-free, lacking wickedness in the eyes of God. And for all ages - Christian and Islamic societies by that theology are under special obligation to not harm them, exploit them and take advantage of their vulnerability.
And illustrate again, as in many areas of radical Islamic behavior, that they are not "purer" Muslims than others, but are embracing deviant, heretical practices abhorred in traditional Islam. And that makes me worry less about them because when they try imposing their version of radical Islam on the masses, it is not well received. (Interrogations of captured and wounded Islamoids, and studies of who the KIA radical Islamoids were reveals they mostly came out of universities in Europe, N Africa, the ME except KSA and Yemen - where they are bolstered by poor incited to fight by wealthy hard radical merchants and Mullahs..)
Miss McArdle,
Are you surprised? You don't remember what the jihadis did in Beslan, Russia? Little children had nothing to eat but the flowers they brought for the first day of school and nothing to drink but their own urine for three days, and then they got shot up.
How about the guy arrested trying to get onto a flight in London a few summers ago? His infant son was his cover for the bomb materials in the baby bottle.
How about the guy caught on surveillance camera in the Tube bomb attempt, turning his backback toward the lady with the pram, at the time the shrapnel bomb was supposed to go off.
Get hip to it. It's them or us. Vote for us.
And please, don't link Jesus' name to something like this. The religous phrase you want is "deliver us from evil".
It is them or us
this should surprise no one
and no, they are not "insurgents", whether in Iraq or even Waziristan, they are nutty arabs from somewhere else (Saudis and Yemenis often) that are desperately willing to kill - kill sheites, americans, jews, anyone really, anyway they can
Yes indeed David Palmer, Vote for Us
Vote for McCain, not Barack Hussein Obama, member of a racist "church" who wants to be friends with Them
In a few years the faces of Osama will join those of Che and Mao on the shirts of the trendy and wealthy.
The twisted souls who sent innocent women to kill a crowd of innocents? They'll be heroes in classrooms in exclusive colleges.
I'm real cautious taking the iraqi governments claim that they were disabled.
A report from Editor and Publisher suggests that there's no good evidence that the bombers actually were retarded, other than one of their severed heads appeared deformed (likely as not from the bombing).
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003705961
This is not to say that the suicide bombers and their recruiters are not despicable, only that much of the news we hear about the war is more misinformed propaganda than anything else.
-ME
Hi Jozef,
Good morning. I wrote "them", not "Them". I referred to real people, with real hate and real bombs.
I have to disagree with you, I don't think they are 'nutty arabs', most everything I've read about them, from Atta to the Doctors in Glasgow, shows they are quite rational, able to function in society, often from privileged backgrounds, and often well educated. Cold-blooded murderers is what they are.
I think I understand your feelings, it does seem most, if not all, terrorists are Muslim, but it doesn't follow most, if not all, Muslims are terrorists. (Basic Propositional Logic.)
Just watch out for the ones who are. And, you'll do better in these debates once you decide to drop the stereotyping.
You could do worse than to vote for McCain, and if he is the nominee, I will too, he certainly knows what it takes to prevail in war.
And a little civility towards Obama would be good as well. "Hussein" is just his middle name. He's 46, so he was around 5 or 6 when Saddam became dictator of Iraq. He wasn't named after him or anything like that. I think it's a pretty common name in Middle East / South Asia / East African families. So is Osama by the way, and I wouldn't saddle a kid with that association either. Obama's a Christian, he goes to a Christian church. Christianity is not racist. It's true he's very liberal, but that's nothing to hold against him personally. He comes across as a very decent person. Nice wife, nice kids. Might even be our President next year, who can tell?
Anyway, don't want to start a big discussion thread, just wanted to point out these are very serious issues that demand to be taken seriously.
Thanks for your time.
The question was asked what the evidence was that the bombers were mentally retarded.
Suicide bombs carried by those of sound mind are normally detonated by the carriers themselves. The claim that these bombs were set off by remote control rather than by buttons operated by the carrier should be verifiable. A bomber of sound mind would be in a much better position than anyone out of range to know when he/she was in the best possible place to carry out hir mission. If a claim that these bombs were set off by remote control can be verified that lends strong support to the hypothesis that these bombs were carried by mental deficients.
-dk
Not really. The moojies have pretty routinely used remote detonated bombs strapped on kidnap victims, who are told they can walk into the crowd, or if they don't they will be killed with pain and their families will be killed, too.
Oh, great.
Instead of using mentally retarded "recruits" they kidnap "recruits" and use the threat of torture and reprisals against family.
I feel better now.
-dk
My larger point in this post is that remote control on the bomb strongly supports the hypothesis that the carriers are not willing fighters, which has two implications:
1: It's more inhuman that otherwise and really the insurgent-sympathetic segment of the western population ought to melt away if this sort of thing becomes common, and
2: It does make one wonder whether they're running out of willing recruits.
-dk