Baghdad Vigilantes
and the Dark Side of Civil Society

Isn't something missing in the current accounts of the new wave of Iraqi violence? The situation has changed quite radically, it seems, but nobody is saying exactly how. Here is how it strikes this naïve observer.

The attacks against our soldiers go on, but there is no surprise there. The suicide bombings of markets, mosques, bus stations, and police recruiting places do too—nothing new there either. The campaign against those courageous individuals who are trying to create a democratic Iraqi government also continues, as does the opportunistic violence of criminal gangs.

What has changed is that all of a sudden there is a whole new category of killing going on. Almost every night scores of individuals, obviously chosen and targeted with care, clearly known personally to their attackers, are being tortured and murdered. Who are they? And who are the killers?

The Press, it seems, is deliberately not answering these questions. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are giving the matter any public attention beyond deploring it in loud but utterly unspecific tones—and this in an election season. Even the Iraqi government is trying to hush it up; recently they forbade the hospitals to give out information about the victims.

It almost seems as if neither side—the ones who want the Iraqi government to fail, and those who want it to succeed--can afford to answer the awkward questions. Here is a hypothesis.

read the hypothesis here


via-Tcs Daily

Headline
via-American Thinker

Why are the Democratic African American candidates of so much greater interest to the national media than the Republican African American candidates running state wide this year? Silly question, of course.

Michael Steele
Lynn Swan

Ken Blackwell

Party label is really all that matters in terms of where to shine the spotlight. And for partisans of the left or the Democratic Party (increasingly the same thing), keeping African American voters on their side of the ledger is of paramount importance. Black voters account for as much as 20% of the national Democratic Party vote. If they started seeing Republican candidates, black or white, as real alternatives, the Democrats’ chance of achieving national majority party status would be doomed. No Democrat has scored above 51% of the popular vote in a Presidential election since1964. And only Jimmy Carter exceeded 50% (barely) in 1976, before registering an all-time low percentage of the popular vote for an incumbent in 1980.

read more here