your village voice

Iraq Shiites Killed By Fear, Not Actual Terrorists

As reported by Bloomberg, this horrific incident happened in Baghdad today:

At least 640 Shiite Muslim pilgrims were killed in a stampede on a bridge spanning the Tigris River in north Baghdad today prompted by an attack by insurgents on a nearby mosque, Iraqi National Assembly adviser George Sada said.

"When people heard that the mosque had been attacked, they panicked and rushed toward the bridge to get out of the area,'' Sada said by telephone from the capital. "There were so many people on the bridge that many fell over its sides and drowned in the Tigris, others were crushed.The force of the crowd broke the bridge's barriers."

Other accounts said people in the crowd reacted to rumors of a suicide bomber among them. The victims were among 3 million pilgrims who massed in the Khadimiya neighborhood for an annual ceremony commemorating the death of Musa al-Khadhim, a revered Shiite Imam, Defense Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi said during a televised news conference from Baghdad at about 6 p.m. local time.

This brings into painful focus the awful reality that human animals, when striken by fear, are nothing more than mere cattle. The capacity for reasonable thought is far too often clouded by the red ink of mob mania, where each individual thought becomes group-think and every phobia is magnified a thousand-fold.

If a terrorist bomb doesn't destroy this world, I fear it is the hysteria and ensuing blind hatred that will.

posted by the prisoner @ 2:50:00 PM