Poor Mojo's Two Minute Hate

Q. Are the terrorists trying to influence our election in your view?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think they're very much aware of our political calendar here, I really do. . . . So I think they are very conscious of the electoral timetable in the United States.

There’s certainly a stepped up level of violence, and we’re heading into an election.

In the deadliest sectarian attack in Baghdad since the American-led invasion, explosions from five powerful car bombs and a mortar shell tore through crowded intersections and marketplaces in the teeming Shiite district of Sadr City on Thursday afternoon, killing at least 144 people and wounding 206, the police said. . . .The attacks were the worst in an intensifying series of revenge killings in recent months, in a cycle that has increasingly paralyzed the political process and segregated the capital into Sunni and Shiite enclaves, and threatened to drag Iraq into an all-out civil war.