You know, I truly, truly grieve for those poor young men and women who diet at VT on Monday... Their deaths are an outrage that not be comprehended by civilized human beings... I certainly dont want to belittle that loss in any way, but my God, what does it say about us as a nation when we are capable of grieving so profusely about our children, while on the other side of the world, we have created an environment so horrible as this:

4 bombs kill 164 people in Baghdad

Four large bombs exploded in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 164 people and wounding scores — the deadliest day in the city since the start of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital two months ago.

The U.S. Defense Department called it "a very bad day in Iraq."

In the deadliest of the attacks, a parked car bomb detonated in a crowd of workers at the Sadriyah market in central Baghdad, killing at least 116 people and wounding 145, said Raad Muhsin, an official at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.

A police official confirmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Among the dead were several construction workers who had been rebuilding the mostly Shiite marketplace after a bombing destroyed many shops and killed 137 people there in February, the police official said.

The laborers typically finish work around 4 p.m. each day. One of those wounded, 28-year-old Salih Mustafa, said he was waiting for a minibus to head home when the blast went off at 4:05 p.m.

"I rushed with others to give a hand and help the victims," he said. "I saw three bodies in a wooden cart, and civilian cars were helping to transfer the victims. It was really a horrible scene."

The market is situated on a side street lined with shops and vendors selling produce, meat and other staples. It is also about 500 yards from a Sunni shrine.

About an hour earlier, a suicide car bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at an entrance to Sadr City, the capital's biggest Shiite Muslim neighborhood and a stronghold for the militia led by radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The explosion killed at least 33 people, including five Iraqi security officers, and wounded 45, police and hospital officials said.

Black smoke billowed from a jumble of at least eight incinerated vehicles that were in a jam of cars stopped at the checkpoint. Bystanders scrambled over twisted metal to drag victims from the smoldering wreckage as Iraqi guards staggered around stunned.

Earlier, a parked car exploded near a private hospital in the central neighborhood of Karradah, killing 11 people and wounding 13, police said. The blast damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.

The fourth explosion was from a bomb left on a minibus in the central Rusafi area, area, killing four people and wounding six others, police said.

Also in Baghdad, four policemen were killed Wednesday afternoon when gunmen ambushed their patrol south of the city center, police said. Six pedestrians were wounded in the gunfire.

U.S. officials had cited a slight decrease in sectarian killings in Baghdad since the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown was launched Feb. 14. But the past week has seen several spectacular attacks on the capital, including a suicide bombing inside parliament and a powerful blast that collapsed a landmark bridge across the Tigris River.

"There have been in the past week or two, a couple of days in which the violence has really spiked. Any time that happens it concerns us but it's a little early to draw any trend-type conclusions," Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday in Washington.

"We've always said that there are going to be good days and bad days ahead. With respect to casualties, this had been a very bad day," he added.

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