With the devastation yesterday in Oklahoma following an enormous tornado, with a winds in excess of 200MPh, leaving some 24 dead and miles destroyed buildings, the US News and Media is rightly focussed on that.

Almost 10-years to the day when then President George Bush declared “Mission accomplished” after landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to declare a end to major combat operations in Iraq.

Arguably Iraq has seen one of it’s worst weeks of car bombings and sectarian deaths. Yesterday alone saw

• 9 car bombs go off in Baghdad striking at bus stops, marketplaces and in the streets in busy morning hours
• At least 24 people were killed and 120+ injured
• 2x car bombs in the city of Basra, one near a restaurant and the other at a bus stop
• At least 10 people dead and 27 wounded

Meaning more than 200 people have been killed in bombing incidents in the last week alone, following on from some 700 violent deaths in April 2013. This weeks total includes

• Ramadi, the bodies of 8x civilians who were kidnapped by gunmen Saturday. All eight had been shot to death.
• The bodies of 6x police officers who had also been abducted Saturday were found dead on a highway in western Ramadi.

While Iraq was far from perfect prior to the invasion, you’d have hoped that some 10-years after mission accomplished, and the billions and billions of dollars it has cost, we’d have accomplished something.