Condi was all over the Sunday talk shows yesterday spinning the story of progress in Iraq. Of course, despite all of her efforts, the media is focusing on those pesky negative stories:
A suicide bomber attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi military base in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 15 people and wounding as many as 30, the Iraqi military said. At least 21 more bodies were found - many with nooses around their neck - and mortar and bomb attacks killed at least four people.Then, there's the swirling controversy over a joint US-Iraqi attack in part of Baghdad. The question is whether the attack occurred at a Shiite mosque. People on the ground -- and the AP -- say it looks that way, but the US military says no:
Details of a joint U.S.-Iraqi Special Operations attack in northeast Baghdad late Sunday continued to filter out. The military, in an updated report, said the joint operation "killed 16 insurgents and wounded three others during a house-to-house search on an objective with multiple structures."Someone isn't telling the truth. Either way, this is not good.
"They also detained 18 other individuals, discovered a significant weapons cache and secured the release of an Iraqi being held hostage," the statement said.
AP reporters who visited the scene Monday morning said the site of the attack was clearly a neighborhood Shiite mosque complex, although the American military insisted, "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation."
Baghdad police said at least 22 were killed in the attack after gunmen fired on the joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol from a position in the neighborhood but not from the mosque. Police and representatives of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who holds great sway among poor Shiites in the eastern section of Baghdad, said all those killed were in the complex for evening prayers and no gunmen were there.
