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The media are scrambling to get with grips with the double bombing in Baghdad on Sunday, targeting national and provincial ministries, that killed more than 150 people. As the BBC’s flagship radio programme somewhat blithely admitted today, the incidents “refocused” world attention on the country.

We’re going to take a couple of days before venturing a full analysis, but the one point we would make, unlikely to be highlighted in the press, is that the event exposes how peripheral the US has become to Iraq’s development. For all the troops that remain in the country, despite having the largest embassy in the world, Washington now watches as political battles are played out through violence, back-room manoeuvres, and public criticisms. This was exposed by the timing of the bomb: it came as Iraqi politicians were to discuss the difficulties stalling next January’s elections.

As usual, Juan Cole offers one of the most penetrating responses to tragedy and politics:

Two massive blasts shook central Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 136 people and wounding 500, and destroying three government ministry buildings, according to the Times of London’s Oliver August reporting from Baghdad. It was the most destructive attack of 2009. August notes that the likely perpetrators were either Baathists from the old regime or Sunni Muslim extremists, both of whom want to stop a new, Shiite- and Kurdish- dominated status quo from settling upon Iraq.

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