Progress in Iraq: Temporary new font on third revision of flag amidst only a few dozen deaths
Things are coming together for Iraq now. Because as Conservatives crow about the spectacular success of the “surge” (read: Escalation), the Iraqi Parliment has now shown it’s not completely incompetent. They’ve made changes to the Iraqi flag. Again. But it will likely change again.
“Iraq Parliament Purges Hussein Vestiges on Flag”
BAGHDAD —Iraqi lawmakers adopted a modified version of the national flag on Tuesday, removing three stars that symbolized the Baathist ideals of unity, freedom, and socialism, and Saddam Hussein’s handwritten calligraphy of the Koranic incantation “Allah u Akbar.” …
Several lawmakers said that because the flag had been changed out of Kurdish expediency, they expected it to be changed again.
The flag is the second design to be introduced in Iraq since the American-led invasion in 2003. In 2004, the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council announced a white, blue and yellow flag with a prominent Islamic crescent. That design was scrapped after Iraqis criticized it for being too radical a change from the original, and too similar to the blue and white flag of Israel.
Billions and billions of dollars gone, hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, and now the fruits of the labor are coming together. Iraq now has a flag that they’ll vote to change again in the near future.
But, at least the surge has worked. We know that because according to Fareed Zakaria, the war is over:
The Democrats are having the hardest time with the new reality. Every candidate is committed to “ending the war” and bringing our troops back home. The trouble is, the war has largely ended, and precisely because our troops are in the middle of it.
So nothing to see here.
In Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, Iraqi police officers said they had found the bodies of a family, a father, his three sons and three nephews. They had been shot to death and discovered in Buhruz, the police said. In Baquba, the provincial capital, a water boiler packed with explosives detonated near a high school and a checkpoint for an American-allied tribal security force, killing three people, and wounded 12 students, the Iraqi police said, and, separately, a gunman killed a civilian near a medical clinic.
The bodies of two more Iraqis, a woman and a policeman, were discovered about 30 miles outside Hilla in the south, the Iraqi police said.
And in Basra, gunmen killed an Iraqi policeman, witnesses said.
“US military sees first Iraq fatality in new armoured vehicle”
BAGHDAD (AFP) — A new-style anti-mine armoured vehicle the US military is hoping will reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq has proven vulnerable, with a first soldier killed in an attack at the weekend.
“An American soldier was killed in an improvised explosive device attack on a MRAP vehicle in Arab Jabour” on the southern outskirts of Baghdad on Saturday, US military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said on Tuesday.
“This was the first fatality involving an IED (roadside bomb) attack on a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) anywhere,” he added.
“There were three other soldiers who sustained non life-threatening injuries as a result of the attack,” Danielson said.
“Suicide Attack at Funeral In Northern Iraq Kills 17″
BAGHDAD, Jan. 21 — A suicide bomber infiltrated a funeral Monday evening and blew himself up among the mourners, killing 17 people in the latest attack in a volatile region of northern Iraq.
But they have a flag. For now. It makes staying there forever all the more worth it.
–WKW