OUTRAGE IN BAGHDAD - AT 9:37 P.M. ET:  Two suicide bombings rocked the Iraq capital today:

BAGHDAD — A pair of suicide car bombs exploded almost simultaneously in downtown Baghdad on Sunday, targeting two government buildings and killing at least 132 people and wounding 520, according to the Ministry of the Interior. The official said the toll may rise even more.

The blasts came just over two months after suicide truck bombs were exploded outside the Finance and Foreign Ministries in Baghdad, killing 122 persons, many of them ministry employees. The high death tolls then were blamed at least in part on the removal of blast-proof walls from outside the ministries.

COMMENT:  A key question here is the reaction of the Obama administration.  The reaction must be fierce and unyielding - that we will not buckle to this new terror. 

But how can the president say that convincingly when, all along, he's argued that Iraq was the wrong war?  Comments like that, and he's made many of them, give aid and comfort to the very people who pulled off this latest atrocity. 

We await Washington's reactions.  I suppose we'll get something on the Sunday talk shows.

October 25,  2009