Aaron VehlingWithin a coordinated 45-minute window Monday morning in Baghdad, four suicide bombers struck the Red Cross headquarters building and three Iraqi police stations.
A fifth would-be bomber was caught before he could detonate his explosives.
UW-Eau Claire history and political science professors disagreed about the nature of the attacks in a series of interviews this week.
“This is a bad sign. It’s a sign of al Qaeda and Hezbollah both coming in,” associate professor of history Selika Ducksworth-Lawton stated in an e-mail. “These are not local fighters. They are targeting civilians.”
Assistant political science professor Stephen Hill disagreed, saying the attacks were more coordinated and sophisticated but still tied to forces of the former Baathist regime.
U.S. forces are involved in “a battle of hearts and minds” for the Iraqi people, he said.
Casting a weary eye on the attacks, Hill said, “We may have not seen the worst of it yet. We may see similar or worse in the future.”
Taking a more general approach was associate political science professor Ali Abootalebi.
He said he would not argue the attacks represent a shift toward “softer,” less secure targets. He said he would argue there’s no shift in the goal of the attacks.
“(The) final goal is to make sure Iraq is not governable by Americans,” he said.
The group or groups behind the attacks are not important, he said, because they all have the same goal in mind.
Another major attack occurred Sunday in Baghdad. The Al-Rasheed hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who was visiting on a three-day trip to Iraq, was staying came under a rocket attack. Wolfowitz was not injured, but a U.S. lieutenant colonel was killed in the attack.
Deputy Mayor of Baghdad Faris Abdul Razzaq al-Assam was killed in a “hit-and-run shooting” also on Sunday.
One hundred and thirteen U.S. soldiers have been killed in combat and about 1,675 wounded since President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1.
– The Associated Press contributed to this story.
