Tag: Antiwar movement

A explosion has ripped through a Hilton hotel in Egypt’s resort of Taba.

A blast ripped through the Hilton hotel in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Taba on Thursday evening, with medical sources saying at least 100 people had been killed or wounded.

The blast, the reasons for which were not immediately clear, killed or wounded at least 100 people of different nationalities, an Egyptian hospital source said.

At least 23 Israelis were killed in the blast, Egyptian police said.

Israeli radio reported that the blast was likely an attack, with an Israeli foreign ministry saying it could have been a car bomb attack, although the Egyptian public TV had earlier said the blast was due to a gas leak.

“An explosion caused by gas took place at a Taba hotel,” Al-Akhbar news channel said, without citing its sources.

“From the first information that we have received it could have been a car bomb attack,” a senior Israeli foreign ministry official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Shortly after the hotel blast, a second explosion was heard in the Sinai desert region of Nuaiba, between the Red Sea resorts of Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh, an Egyptian police source said.

“At least seven people have been brought to the emergency room, one of them seriously wounded,” Coby Arad of Yosseftal hospital in Eilat, across the border in Israel, told public radio.

The US fortress inside Baghdad, where the American embassy sits behind razorwire and concrete blast barricades and where the “Interim government” of Iraq installed by the US is stored, is being penetrated more and more frequently by the Iraqi resistance. In a report today from the AP:

The warning to Americans and Iraqi officials in the Green Zone followed the discovery Tuesday of an explosive device at the Green Zone Cafe, a popular hangout for Westerners living and working in the compound which houses major U.S. and Iraqi government offices. A U.S. military ordnance detachment safely disarmed it, U.S. officials said.

A loud explosion shook the Green Zone on Thursday afternoon and smoke was seen rising from inside the compound. The U.S. military had no immediate information on the incident. Insurgents regularly fire at the compound.

Americans living and working in the zone were warned to avoid non-essential movements, travel in groups and avoid specific areas.

A Financial Times article from September 15 cites American military commanders:

US military officers in Baghdad have warned they cannot guarantee the security of the perimeter around the Green Zone, the headquarters of the Iraqi government and home to the US and British embassies, according to security company employees.

At a briefing earlier this month, a high-ranking US officer in charge of the zone’s perimeter said he had insufficient soldiers to prevent intruders penetrating the compound’s defences.

The US major said it was possible weapons or explosives had already been stashed in the zone, and warned people to move in pairs for their own safety. The Green Zone, in Baghdad’s centre, is one of the most fortified US installations in Iraq. Until now, militants have not been able to penetrate it.

And so it goes. Less than a month ago, the 1,000 American deaths milestone was passed and as of 10/6/04 the toll stood at 1065 dead Americans. According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website, there have been exactly FOUR days in the year 2004 which have passed without at least one American military death and the last such day was in June.

There is now no area in Iraq in which it is possible for an American to travel freely.

So much for the imposition of “democracy” at the point of a gun. The only question remaining about the American occupation of Iraq involves the details of how it badly and quickly it ends.

CORRECTION: A reader points out in comments that I have incorrectly counted the days which passed without an American death. The actual number is 62 days in 2004 without an American death, according to the Iraq Coalition Body Count website, here and here.

UPDATE: The Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad, popular among Western journalists and located near the Green Zone, has been hit by rockets.

Julia “Don’t Call Me a Neoconservative, You F***ing Anti-Semite” Gorin demonstrates her deep ethnic sensitivity in a new column over at Jewish World Review:

[A] Latino cheating is one who cheats his nature by having only one woman at a time, and if such a Latin man exists, it’s probably because he has Downs Syndrome.

Don’t blame Ms. Gorin, though: hers is the hate that hate made. Latinos and Downs sufferers are, like 99% of the rest of humanity, anti-Semitic – at least according to neocon logic.

(Hat tip to that anti-Semite Andrew Sullivan.)

In his defense of Edwards’ attack on the Halliburton issue in last night’s debate, Vice President Cheney mentioned a Website that had defended him against an accusation over his former employer. However, he mistakenly said FactCheck.com, a private advertising company, instead of FactCheck.org, which is run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

Overwhelmed with the traffic and apparently not very pro-Bush, the owners of FactCheck.com forwarded their domain over to George Soros’ Website, which is titled: Why We Must Not Re-Elect President Bush.

Even worse for Bush-Cheney, if someone figures out where the Vice President intended to send them and goes to the Annenberg Center Website, they will find a new report: a detailed critique of the Vice Presidential debate focusing on the many inaccuracies of the Veep. Their website has been inundated, but here is a mirror of their report.

It’s amusing to watch the developing Bremer vs. The Neocons war with Anonymous’ words in mind:

Powell’s early 2005 departure is the subject of intense jockeying among the neocons. A Perle neocon protégé, Michael Rubin, has been given the task of destroying the only competition — L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer, the former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority chief, not a neocon insider and the favorite of traditional Republican conservatives. The neocon plan is to make Bremer the scapegoat: It was not bad neocon policy, it was bad Bremer decisions that has led to the fiasco in Iraq. Rubin was sent to Baghdad to be Wolfowitz’s man inside the CPA. Bremer dissed Rubin as a lightweight. Rubin tried to push neocon policy inside the CPA — what he, Perle and Ahmed Chalabi had pushed from the American Enterprise Institute — restoring the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq by placing Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan on the throne. Bremer would have none of it. Rubin is now tasked by Perle and Wolfowitz to trash Bremer — which he is dutifully doing in print and media appearances arranged by neocon handler, lecture agent and media booker Eleana Benador. They intend to close the Foggy Bottom door to any aspirations Bremer, a former Foreign Service officer and Kissinger protégé, might have to take over from Powell.
[…]
But Bush the Crusader is off to a rocky start in Iraq. The ongoing meltdown is awakening Americans to the reality of the neocon agenda. But is it too late? Neocons are not dissuaded by the problems in Iraq; on the contrary, they are arguing that the problem is “Bremerism” — the U.S. has not gone far enough. In their view, we need to take out the Palestinians, Syria and Iran now.

Sure enough, if you go to the Benador site and look at Rubin’s archives, you find titles like BREMER’S LEGACY A RECIPE FOR INSTABILITY. Apparently Bremer is fighting back, with an accusation that there were too few post-invasion troops to control the rampant looting that occurred. Atrios has checked out some of the rotten tomatoes hurled at Bremer by neocons since Bremer’s statement.

I like watching this food fight because I can root for both sides to lose.

UPDATE: Another neocon chimes in, right on cue:

BREMER [Michael Ledeen]
I see where Jerry Bremer is beating up on the Pentagon for the “sin” of not having enough troops for Viceroy Bremer to deploy where and when he wished. No big surprise there; he’s a State Dept guy, after all. But somebody might think to point out that he was a driving force behind the catastrophic decision to call off the Marines just as they were on the verge of smashing the terrorist enclave in Fallujah. And that wasn’t because we lacked troops. It was because we lacked will. He was afraid the Sunnis on the Governing Council were going to resign, and that would make him look bad…so let’s keep proper perspective on who’s responsible for what in Iraq, ok?

Emphasis mine.

So, they’re sending “paperwork units” and weaponless training units to Iraq, as well as calling up thousands of IRR soldiers.

A Sacramento-based Army National Guard unit that usually processes paperwork for other soldiers going overseas was called up to serve for more than a year in Iraq.

The 79th Personnel Services Detachment was briefed Sunday about preparing to leave for Fort Lewis in Washington state where the 50 members will be notified of their duties for an 18-month assignment in Iraq.

The soldiers were told how to apply for life insurance and were told how much their children and spouses would receive if they were killed in action.

Too bad the 101st Keyboard Commando Brigade isn’t going. I guess they have to stay behind to report all the good news coming out of Iraq that the liberal media keeps covering up.