Iraq: Violence Still Rages

For a country that is apparently so clean you can eat off its streets, and where more schools have been painted than ever, violence sure seems to keep happening in Iraq.

A female suicide bomber killed 10 people in Iraq on Wednesday, the latest in a string of suicide bombings that has seen a major strike nearly every day of the past week despite an overall decline in violence.

The woman blew herself up with an explosive vest at a checkpoint of neighborhood patrol volunteers in Baquba, capital of the restive Diyala province. Twenty-eight people were wounded including some women, police said.

The attack came the day after a bomber detonated his explosive vest in a tent crowded with mourners at a Baghdad funeral. Police raised the death toll from that strike to 34, making it the worst in the capital in six months.

Look, a lot of the impact of violence like this is how it affects the psyche of the people, and clearly Iraqis in Baghdad feel a little safer, in part because they've been led to believe that the occupation forces may leave soon. But these gains are reversible. And they're more likely to reverse if political progress remains stalemated. We're still in a very uneasy situation.