Iraq Under Fire

Bombs in Shiite cities kill 60, hurt 123 more
3 election officials yanked from car, killed by rebels in Baghdad

Car bombers struck crowds in Najaf and Karbala in Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 60 people and wounding 123 others in those two holy Shiite cities only days into Iraq's six-week election campaign.

In a bold attack in the heart of Baghdad, about 30 insurgents hurling grenades and firing machine guns pulled three election officials from their car in the midst of morning traffic and executed them in the road with shots to the head.

Taken together, the attacks represented the second-worst daily death toll from insurgent action in Iraq since the U.S. military occupation transferred formal sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government nearly six months ago.

The only day that was worse was July 28, when almost 70 people were killed by a suicide bomber near a police recruiting center in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.

The attacks also raised the specter of exactly the kind of violence that U.S. and Iraqi officials have been hoping to minimize ahead of elections to a national assembly scheduled for Jan. 30.

In a message passed on by lawyers who visited him in his cell last week, ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein denounced the elections as an American plot.

"President Saddam recommended to the Iraqi people to be careful of this election, which will lead to dividing the Iraqi people and their land," Ziad al-Khasawneh, who heads Hussein's legal team, said in Jordan. An Iraqi member of the team met Hussein in detention on Thursday.

OPINION SECTION:

Look at America today. We are so politically divided. Such is the downfall of a democracy that allows two opposing views to exist. But can the the Islamic religion handle a divide in thinking? Each side will find some way to support their side with religious reasoning making civil war possible. It could be said that that civil war is already going on and then I say it's possible for an increase in the amount of warfare going on. Essentially, you have a country being torn apart instead of rebuilt because you've introduced Western philosophy that it cannot handle. As bad as Saddam is, I do not think the American people can take for granted the political mind of Saddam Hussein.

I knew death and destruction would happen. I also knew that this war would drag on. But I still am not prepared to accept the way war is being waged. I do not trust America to plan for reconstruction effectively. I also do not think that doing it unilaterally is a good idea because it hurts international relations and it puts a weight on the American peoples' shoulders that many cannot carry.