Baghdad

Bombers strike Baghdad for second day. :

"According to an audiotape posted on the Internet, Zarqawi also declared 'all-out war' on Iraq's majority Shiites.

'Any religious group that wants to be safe from the blows of the mujahedeen (holy warriors) must (disavow) the government of (Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim) Jaafari and its crimes. Otherwise it will suffer the same fate as that of the crusaders,' according to the tape, the authenticity of which could not be verified."

Sony or Teac must be making a fortune from the number of video tapes and audio tapes Al Qaeda use. They are certainly a sound consumer group. Haven't they got MP3 and DVD players? I suppose not. Jokes aside, which are my way of dealing with it at the moment, does anyone else get the feeling there is no intention of resolving anything in Iraq? That it's just one big ,disgusting , deadly mess. A boiling stew pot? That it just keeps bubbling away with no peaceful resolution in sight? Too many explosions, too much death and not enough talk? Is it politically or geopolitically advantageous to keep this festering, deadly brew on the bubble? I'd love to wake up one morning and hear we have had a gutful of the death and destruction. That we have reached saturation point on killing human beings. Seriously, has anyone got a running total of how many people we have killed on Planet Earth this year? A couple of hundred thousand here, a couple of hundred there, fifty odd here, a hundred and odd there, twenty something here, seventy something there. Here a couple, there a dozen, ones and twos...the total must be phenomenal. Have we had enough death on planet earth yet? Are we ready to stop it?