Was the Market Place Explosion of Iraqi Origin?

Was the Market Place Explosion of Iraqi Origin?

Way back during the war, there was a much publicized explosion in a Baghdad open-air market that killed scores of Iraqis. The media parroted the official Saddamite line that the explosion was caused by an American missile. Protestations from the US military that all oridinance dropped that day could be accounted for were ignored.
One look at the damage was enough to convince me that this was not an American bomb or missile. Frankly, our bombs make bigger holes.
I suspected that the bomb was detonated by Saddamites who were looking to win a public relations victory, knowing that the leftist media would blame the United States.
This story from a Nicholas Kristoff column in the New York Times tells me that the Iraqi hierarchy was certainly capable of conceiving such a plan. Please note that Nicholas Kristoff is no friend of the Bush Administration, the military or the United States for that matter.

"The hospital staff also said that on the night of March 27, military officials prepared to kill Ms. Lynch by putting her in an ambulance and blowing it up with its occupants — blaming the atrocity on the Americans. The ambulance drivers balked at that idea. Eventually, the plan was changed so that a military officer would shoot Ms. Lynch and burn the ambulance. So Sabah Khazal, an ambulance driver, loaded her in the vehicle and drove off with a military officer assigned to execute her.

"I asked him not to shoot Jessica," Mr. Khazal said, "and he was afraid of God and didn't kill her." Instead, the executioner ran away and deserted the army, and Mr. Khazal said that he then thought about delivering Ms. Lynch to an American checkpoint. But there were firefights on the streets, so he returned to the hospital. (Ms. Lynch apparently never knew how close she had come to execution.)"