Pepe Escobar: "Blood on the Iraqi-Syrian tracks"

from asia times online........

"It was a bloody Monday all across Iraq; two suicide bombers, 11 car bombs, and 19 VBIEDs (Pentagon speak for "vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices") - with nearly 70 people dead and over 300 wounded. 

Car bombs in Najaf, another one inside Kut's main market, a bomb set off near the convoy of the mayor of Baquba, two suicide bombers attacking an Iraqi counter-terrorism unit in Tikrit, a bomb exploding near a government convoy in the Mansur neighborhood in Baghdad - the fact that bloody Monday happened less than two weeks after the Nuri al-Maliki government announced negotiations were on for Washington to keep at least some of the current 48,000 US troops in Iraq after the end of 2011 deadline for American withdrawal raises the inevitable question: who profits from it?

Al-Qaeda in Iraq might profit if its strategy is to keep the US enmeshed in the Iraqi quagmire - as the key accusation already flying across the Potomac concerns the "capability" of the Iraqi security forces, with the "overwhelmed by insurgents" scenario monopolizing the narrative. United States neo-conservatives, armchair hawks, most inside the Pentagon and virtually all Republicans also profit - for the same reasons'............READ MORE