http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090104/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq

BAGHDAD – A woman hiding among Iranian pilgrims with a bomb strapped under her black robe killed more than three dozen people on Sunday outside a Baghdad mosque during ceremonies commemorating the death of one of Shiite Islam’s most revered saints.

The suicide attack, the most recent in a series that has killed more than 60 people in less that a week, was the latest to mar the transfer of many security responsibilities from the U.S. military to Iraqi forces.

The attack in Baghdad’s northern Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, which also and wounded at least 72 people, comes two days after a suicide bomber slipped into a luncheon at a tribal leader’s home south of Baghdad and killed at least 23 people. More than a dozen other people have died in other attacks since New Year’s Day.

Anyone know if Ambassador Crocker plans to stay on?

Maybe you can pay someone with an NEC badge, kinda like when you were in high school…

Oh, I’m not complacent about the SOFA. It leaves us open to reprisals- speculation is that BW is about to be hassled big time- but the problem for the Iraqis with that is that the vast majority of Blackwater contractors are with State, not DoD. So they are still on diplo status.

I think that the goal of turning this place over in an arbitrary time frame was never a good idea from a “security of the region” standpoint. Japan and Germany were not turned around this quickly, and Iraq has not been either.

Still and all, there has been some progress here. And regardless, this is the way the chips have fallen.

Turning over the palace the other day was a big deal. Sensitive enough that we had to avoid the area all day. Closed the PX and the road around about. Very annoying. The SOFA is a solid change, but some other things are more symbolic. It’s going to take a while to shake out and evaluate where it all stands. Hopefully, by that time I won’t be here any more. Right now I am sked to leave on the 21st. The changeover on New Year’s Eve hasn’t greatly affected my daily routine, yet. We have some extra barricades and checkpoints up for the nonce, but doubt they’ll stay that way for long. The whole point is that things are supposedly ‘normalizing’, a state of affairs that DoS has been pushing for a long time, even when it didn’t make much practical sense from the worm’s eye view.

Speaking of DoS, they’re not TELLING their people they are on lockdown, but policy seems to be encouraging them to take a fortress mentality inside the new embassy compound, as they provide goodies (the PX doesn’t have
any alcohol, but the store inside the Embassy has Guinness among many other choices, and I don’t have a NEC badge- grr) and facilities in there, and reduce the number of vehicles available, and otherise just make it less easy to move about the IZ.

Are all those detainees brought in by the US going to stay in jail without warrants issued by Iraqi judges? Nope, although the JAGs are very, very busy right now.

Can the US even collect biometric data anymore outside of its own garrisons? Without an Iraqi judge’s court order, of course?

I’ve mentioned before that a SOFA with Iraq was a bad idea because of its implications to Shari’a. The SOFA Iran signed with the USA catapulted Khomeini to the forefront way back when (1960s, kids), and in the world of muslim malcontents (a billion or so, MOL), there have been rumblings about this SOFA, too, being a kufr act.

It has great, great potential to go to Hell in a handbasket. Pray that it doesn’t, because the options left to us now aren’t pretty.