Oh, i've forgotten about Iraq

Ok, The untimely deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett have dominated our "news" these last 24 hrs, with Iran before that. The continued operations in Iraq almost seem a distant memory as far as our "media" is concerned.

**The spellings of some of these Arabic words/names may be different from what you read in NYT. I try to get my info from many sources including Al Jazeera and I tend to mix and match spelling variations-I apologize for any confusion**

In case you missed it, yesterday a bombing killed an estimated 75+ people in a section of Baghdad that is home to over 2 million people. This is just the most recent in a string of attacks- including the suicide bombings of a Shiite Muslim shrine right outside of Baghdad.

In the past month, there have been over 35 explosions. All of these acts of violence have been perpetrated against Shiites by al-Zarqawi's(who was killed in June by a US air-strike) successor, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, who has taken over as leader of al-Qa'ida in the Land of the Two Rivers (AQI)-or al-Qaida in Iraq. Their main "beef" is with Shiites at large, whom they refer to as "Rawafid" -which means, "those who reject." Which, though true, has become a derrogatory term.

al-Zarqawi's ideas and strategies have been questioned and criticized by many of his supporters and predecessors including al-Zawahiri himself (arguably the leader of al-Qaida). They claim that al Zarqawi invented a new form of Salafi jihadism.

Salafi basically refers to the idea that Islam was "perfect" up to the 2 generations following the death of Muhammad...and then it went down the shitter due to materialism and cultural changes. Salafism basically seeks to go back to the "original" form of Islam and is pretty much the same as Wahhabism, though followers of Salafism reject Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab's changing the name to his own.

Why do I deem this all important??

'Cause under an agreement signed last year between the US and Iraq, American troops must leave Iraqi cities by the end of June, and President Obama has pledged to withdraw most Americans from Iraq by the end of 2010. Officials in both governments, however, have said the pullback might be delayed in areas where violence remains high.

It would seem as though the violence not only remains high, but is increasing.

**I found the first article/blurb interresting/scary: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200706/primarysources