Attack within the Green Zone:

“An explosion has hit a cafeteria at the Iraqi parliament, killing at least eight people, at least two of them MPs, the US military has said.

Police said they believed a suicide bomber was involved. Twenty-three people were injured in the attack.

The cafe, in Baghdad’s highly fortified Green Zone, is for MPs and their staff, some of whom were having lunch there.

Earlier, a bomb on a bridge in Baghdad killed at least eight people and sent several cars into the River Tigris.

The two attacks are major blows to the much-trumpeted Baghdad security surge now in its third month, the BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad says.

The convention centre where parliament meets is one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the country, he says.

There are sniffer dogs, and all the other usual precautions are taken. Sometimes several searches are made within the space of just a few metres.”

No doubt not a good day for the surge, but I’m not in the camp of some like Capt Ed are commenting that this is a hugh blow to the “surge” and bad news for the “Defenders of the war”.

“This will probably create an almost insurmountable problem for Nouri al-Maliki and his government. Already, Iraqi politicians have declared the new security plan a failure. They will not allow this attack to go without some accountability from the government and perhaps an abandonment of the new joint Iraqi-US plan put in place earlier this year. That would put the Bush administration in a difficult position; if the Iraqis declare the new Baghdad security plan a failure, his domestic political support for the war will collapse entirely.
The next few days will be critical for Maliki and Bush. This could wind up as this war’s version of the Tet attack on the US Embassy in Saigon, an event that provided the tipping point for American patience in a foreign war.

As Col. Potter used to say, “Horsefeathers!” “War is Hell”.¬† Besides, “domestic political support” has been in a slip for a while Capt, and if they build Disney World in the middle of Baghdad it wouldn’t change a thing.