Unqualified Offerings

Iraqis need no longer resent inhabitants of the Green Zone for enjoying a security unavailable to Baghdad’s hoi polloi:

BAGHDAD (AP) — Suspected Shiite militants lobbed rockets and mortar shells into the U.S.-protected Green Zone and a military base elsewhere in Baghdad on Sunday, killing three American troops and wounding 31, officials said.

The attacks occurred as U.S. and Iraqi forces battled Shiite militants in Sadr City in some of the fiercest fighting since radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered a cease-fire a week ago. At least 16 Iraqi civilians were killed and nearly 100 wounded in the fighting, according to hospital officials.

A military official said two U.S. troops died and 17 were wounded in the attack on the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government headquarters in central Baghdad.

The article is worth reading for the inanity of every word that comes from official mouths. No named, quoted American spokesperson says anything that isn’t mere spin. We are by golly going to do awesome things and those other guys are gosh darnit terrible people. What our military and civilian flacks mustn’t do is dwell on the brute fact that after five years of war and nine months of surgeisworking, there isn’t a square yard of Iraq where someone can’t and won’t kill Americans if given a chance, or one where an Iraqi can presume he will not suffer a gruesome death at any moment. Such is the calm and security it would be immoral for us to decline to preserve for a grateful dependency.

Via Atrios.