"As Dick Cheney Predicted..."

"Colonel Sean MacFarland, commander of the First Armored Division's First Brigade Combat Team (1-1 AD) says that Sinjar "feels like Paris in 1944." Parents and children line the streets when U.S. patrols pass by, while Yezidi clerics pray for the welfare of U.S. forces. More even than Paris, in fact, Sinjar feels like Iraq as Dick Cheney predicted it would be..." - Lawrence Kaplan, TNR, October 2006.

"In scenes reminiscent of an earthquake zone, bodies lay in the street covered in blankets amid the shattered ruins of clay-built houses. The buildings, mostly one-storey structures, had been completely razed. "This is a catastrophe that cannot be described in words," said the governor of Nineveh province, Duraid Kashmoula, adding that more than 200 people were killed and 300 wounded.

He said he believed the toll could rise as many were believed buried beneath the rubble that bulldozers were trying to shift. Many people were listed as missing. Kashmoula declared the area a disaster zone and asked for central government help. When he toured the scene he was besieged by people pleading for help in finding loved ones. "The scale of the destruction is unimaginable," said another visitor to the scene, a regional government official...

In the aftermath of the blast, authorities imposed a total curfew in the Sinjar area, which is close to the Syrian border." - Daily Mirror, yesterday.

(Hat tip: Ben Wasserstein.)