And Then There Was ... Iraq

In a week of news involving the Attorney General going down, the Virginia State tragedy going down, abortion rights going down, Wolfowitz going down, where do you fix the focus?

... It's ironic Iraq got pushed to the sidelines this week considering the surge may have effectively died on Wednesday. 

The five massive bombings in Baghdad (and one, just outside) seemed to signify, in horribly dramatic fashion, that the U.S. is helpless to stop the violence. (Accompanying the story, the NYT slide show seemed to also convey a definitive sense.)

Because of size constraints, its been my practice to post larger images as thumbnails, with the full-size in a pop up.  I'm forsaking that convention today because I don't feel this sweeping image deserves to be minimized.  (To view in total, you might have to expand your browser window.)

Meanwhile, the visual beat can sometimes be illustrated by the lack of an image.... 

In a story that, just as much, spells out the futility of the surge, the LAT reports that U.S. forces have been building a three-mile-long security wall in the Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya to separate its Sunni and Shia districts.  Accompanying the article is a photo of U.S. troops holed up in Adhamiya. 

As for the wall itself? There's no visual documentation (either at the Times website, or on the newswire -- as far as I could tell) of the portentous evidence.

(Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images.  Baghdad. April 18, 2007.  nytimes.com)