Iraq's soccer team wins an important match, but the celebrations quickly turned into mourning.

Hey everyone,
Hope you like today's cartoon.

As suicide bombings have become commonplace in Iraq, it seems strange to me that people don't talk about what motivates suicide bombers and their masters. Perhaps it's that it seems obvious. Al Qaeda hates us. And Many are not interested in their motivations. Why care about what crazy people think? Why give credence to the ideas of those who commit abominable acts? However, there is a overarching, common logic to all suicide bombings, a logic that is almost never discussed, despite its huge practical value in combatting terrorism.

More below.

You won't find this news reported by any of the anti-Muslim bigots

There is to be a gathering soon of true believers in Wisconsin and Alabama.  A meeting of those with Absolute Conviction, as Eyal Press called it in his book of that name.  One will be a meeting to celebrate the life and "martyr's death" of Paul Hill, and others of like mind.  A meeting to call for more sacrifice in the ongoing, seemingly never ending struggle by fundamentalist Christians to overturn Roe v. Wade.  Or, that being impossible to acheive in a timely manner, to eliminate safe, legal aborion services in this country and Canada by eliminating abortion care providers.  I wonder what the MSM and TGDSOBGWB will have to say about this "Gathering Of The Klans."

And to top off the month's activities,, we have the Operation Save America decending on Birmingham, AL, to try to "shut down" the clinic where Eric Rudolph killed a B'ham policeman and maimed nurse Emily Lyons.  This to be another "Gathering Of The Klans" in an old Klan stronghold.

Every time a bomb goes off in the middle east, some news organization
state that the bomb was detonated by a "suicide bomber".  
The question is, "How the hell do they know?
If a group of thugs grabbed you on a Baghdad street, hauled you off to
a secret place, put a vest of sticks of dynamite on you---what could you do about it?  They could make you do anything.  They could have you walk up to a group of American soldiers, or anyone they wished to target and then blow you and the target to hell.
The title of "suicide bomber" makes good press.  It tells the lie that there are fanatics out there waiting to destroy themselves and you for
the jihad.  It could be nothing more than psychological warfare being carried out by warmongers wanting to perpetuate their "golden goose".
The World Conspiracy that is stealing Iraqi oil, laundering it into
Saudi oil and selling it at three times the former peak price are
making huge sums of money.  They always want a win/win solution to everything.  Iraq used to have the World's second largest oil reserves.
Do you have any idea who these thieves are?

There have been reports of 5 suicide bombings in Iraq today.  One of which seems to have targeted Sunni tribal leaders.

From an article at Time.com.

A suicide bomber apparently targeting a meeting of U.S.-allied Sunni sheiks penetrated layers of security and blew himself up in a hotel lobby on Monday, killing four tribal leaders and at least eight others, police reported.

SNIP

After the blast, a member of the Anbar Salvation Council said in the provincial capital of Ramadi that the sheiks meeting at the Mansour Hotel had been dropped from the council "because they did not continue working with us." He said they had been meeting secretly with government officials, about unspecified matters. The U.S. command here has pointed repeatedly to the Anbar group and its opposition to al-Qaida as an example for other tribes to follow elsewhere in Iraq.

In light of the last diary entry, I realized that we have rainbow of opinions about Islam here in the U.S. in general and on dkos particularly. Therefore, I am going to attempt to organize, construct and eventually debate several issues of consequence that exist in our daily lives. These areas I will address here at dkos will be some of the most highly debated and scrutinized topics in our modern times however, I will debate them from classical Islamic jurisprudence to the best of my ability. I will do this mainly by way of references to classical and modern scholars but my intention here is to inform the uninformed and prevent further conclusion to be unjustifiably made. And now I would like to discuss the item of suicide bombing.

This is reported on The Blotter.  

It doesn't surprise me given the madness Bush has unleashed.  The lead paragraphs:

Large teams of newly trained suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe, according to evidence contained on a new videotape obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9.  
 

(Update below)

Large teams of newly trained suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe, according to evidence contained on a new videotape obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

Now I've been one of the few people left in Canada who didn't think Stockwell Day was a complete idiot.  I spent many years living in Alberta when he was a provincial cabinet minister, and to be honest, he wasn't that bad at it.  Sure, once he got on the National stage his lunacy began to show, but I still pulled for him.  He was like the little engine that couldn't--you just have to feel sorry for him.

But no longer.

Today, Shin Bet announced that it had foiled a double suicide bombing in May.  Two women, both mothers, had planned on crossing into Israel, meeting with contacts for a suicide belt from Ramallah and then on blowing themselves up in a 'restaurant or wedding hall' in Tel Aviv and Netanya.  (We have family living in Netanya)

Robert Pape, a Professor at the prestigious University of Chicago, concludes that there is no such link. In fact, Pape’s research shows that, "Over 95% of all suicide attacks are not religious".

Furthermore, the world leaders in suicide attacks weren’t Muslims at all, but the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka — a Hindu/Marxist group.  I am appending this extremely important report below, published in a relatively low-key paper. Interestingly, the paper reporting this is the Cleveland Jewish News, so at least we cannot blame it for being biased to Muslims!

The article is here: Occupation, not Islam, ‘drives suicide attacks’ By MARILYN H. KARFELD, Senior Staff Reporter

Like many people, we have friends with family stationed in Iraq. One friend's son is an Army medic. He went into the Army all excited about his future just over 2 years ago. He was trained as a medic and, due to a quirk of fate, had his first deployment to - Alaska. He found Alaska quite boring and in his words, "I didn't know when I had a good thing going".

Several months ago he received his orders for deployment to Iraq. He was given leave to see his family before shipping out. His mother (our friend) threw a going away party. We went and wished him well. Asked after his body armor, which he had....and silently prayed for his future well being.

Today, I received an email from this nice man who was concerned that we might be worried about him. He is so right - his family and friends are worried about him.

During a recent trip to Brazil, Pope Benedict XVI delivered an address in which he reaffirmed the theological, political and imperialistic values of the Roman Catholic Church. In his address, the Pontiff recited an exegesis of ills that beset humankind; however, he demonstrated either a case of selected amnesia, total ignorance, or a laughably revisionist view of Western Civilization.  The most troubling aspect of Benedict’s historiography is its similarity to the socio-economic models he condemns—capitalism and Marxism, in a rage against material concerns, noting, they "falsify the notion of reality by detaching it from the foundational and decisive reality which is God."

This morning, a year-long trial in the Old Bailey came to a conclusion. A jury found five of seven Muslim men guilty of conspiracy to detonate bombs intended to kill hundreds in targets as varied as one of the largest of the UK’s shopping malls and one of its largest night clubs, the Ministry of Sound. Sentencing will occur this afternoon. Speculation is that this will be up to forty years for some and the judge has already indicated that there will be no remission.

The seven defendants were arrested in March 2004 following the discovery of more than half a ton of chemical fertiliser in storage in west London. Links with al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan have been established.

The cost of the trial to British taxpayers is estimated at over $100m.  The outcome is seen as a success for international co-operation, with security services in the USA, Canada and – in the shadows – Pakistan all being involved.

I was told I needed to delete this blog, on christians being killed in Iraq

UPDATE:

Washington Post reporter Sudarsan Raghavan was conducting an interview yesterday inside the Iraqi Parliament cafeteria at the moment the suicide bomb exploded.  Slightly injured in the blast, he evacuated the premises but sometime later returned to retrieve his digital recorder.  The machine was still running, and recorded some of the chaos in the moments after the bomb went off.

For the entire 8-minute segment on wapo.com, click here.  For the bits reprinted in this morning's Post, follow me over the fold.