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Violence in Iraq has spiked dangerously over the past week. Just today a small truck passed through an Iraqi police checkpoint and detonated an explosive outside a vegetable market in Baghdad killing two people. Yesterday in Baghdad explosives attached to a bicycle killed two more and a series of roadside bombs killed at least four people near the southern Iraqi Shi’ia city of Karbala. These attacks come in a wake of two major truck bombs in Baghdad on Wednesday that killed at least a hundred people and wounded five-hundred more. No person or organization has yet claimed responsibility for the truck bombs, which were aimed at the foreign and finance ministry buildings. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki convened an emergency meeting to review security measures and publicly blamed Wednesday’s bombings on Sunni insurgents with links to al-Qaeda. He placed eleven security officers in detention for possible negligence following the attacks. Prior to the upsurge in violence this week, the U.S. military had been discussing patrols in northern Iraq with al-Maliki in response to recent tensions and clashes between Arabs and Kurds in the region. Does the rash of bombings in Iraq this month signal the deterioration of security in Iraq following the pullback of U.S. troops from Iraqi cities earlier this summer?

GUEST: Phyllis Bennis, fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and the Transnational Institute