Day: February 18, 2007

Two car bombs exploded in an outdoor market in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 33 people and injuring scores in the deadliest attack since U.S. and Iraqi forces began a major security push around the capital last week.

The twin blasts tore through the open-air market in the mostly Shiite district of New Baghdad. At least 127 people were injured, said a police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

The explosions toppled wooden vendors’ stalls and utility poles, and blood pooled in the debris.

By JIM MANNION

Unfounded intelligence claims that paved the way for war in Iraq blew back like a ghost last week to haunt US charges that Iran is arming Iraqi extremists.

President George W. Bush and his top aides had to admit by week’s end that they did not know whether Iran’s leaders knew that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was supplying Shiite militias with sophisticated bombs and training.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the early front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has called for a 90-day deadline to start pulling American troops from Iraq.

Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, has been criticized by some Democrats for supporting authorization of the war in 2002 and for not renouncing her vote as she seeks the U.S. presidency in next year’s election.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole has returned to the campaign trail, declaring her intentions to seek a second term in what she calls “the worst political environment in memory.”

“I am going to need your help as we rev up the campaign for 2008,” Dole, R-N.C., told supporters at a barbecue Friday.

Some had speculated whether the 70-year-old Dole would continue her political career. She recently underwent hip replacement surgery, has been slow to assemble a campaign staff and had raised only $245,016 in campaign funds at the end of 2006.