Residents: Baqouba is deadly ghost city

[spinbaby]

Many residents of Baqouba say they live hunkered down in cold, dark houses afraid to go out, that the once mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods are riven by sectarian cleansing, that the police force has virtually collapsed, and that longtime rituals — like the annual orange festival — have become unthinkable.

U.S. and Iraqi military officials, in response to questions, paint a different portrait. They insist the city is not nearly as dangerous as "rumors" put it. According to them, Baqouba is improving and violence is down.

Events Monday seemed to contradict those assertions. A car bomb and mortar bombardment in nearby Khalis killed at least 12 people, and state television reported that gunmen in Baqouba proper attacked the mayor's office, ransacking the building and setting off explosive charges that damaged the structure. Police said the Sunni mayor was kidnapped, a report U.S. officials said they could not immediately confirm.

In a video news conference just prior to the attack and in an e-mail response two days earlier to The Associated Press, a senior U.S. military officer emphasized that progress is being made in Baqouba.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iraq_a_city_s_tale

[acmavm]

1. Let's see, who do I believe? The people who live there or the

bastards with a perfect track record for lying through their teeth?

[LynnTheDem]

2. Depends...are you a stupid MFing rightwingnut, or a

sentient human being?

[Seldona]

3. When are these people going to join us here in reality land?

Four years into this and we STILL have people in charge that won't even ADMIT the problems let alone try to solve them. If anyone shows signs of getting it they are immediately fired.

I just hope we can make it two more years until this madman heads back to Crawford.