Is Iraq Unraveling?



Iraq’s Sectarian Violence: Bombings Plunge Country Into Deadly Spiral -- Time

In early January 2006, less than a month after I arrived in Iraq as a young U.S. Army lieutenant, I witnessed my first act of violence committed against Iraqi civilians. While on a patrol on a highway 20 km south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting my platoon exploded a second too late — or perhaps a second too early — in front of my vehicle and behind my wingman, tearing instead into a tiny pickup truck traveling in the right-hand lane. When I ran up to the truck, I found the driver dead, his head nearly decapitated.

It took me a few seconds to see his son slumped beside him, his tiny body torn to pieces from the bomb’s shrapnel. They must have just left a market, I thought. The boy held a crate of eggs on his lap. Despite the carnage inside the cab, the shattered glass and chunks of flesh, the two dozen eggs were untouched. Not a single one was broken.

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