Los Angeles Times on Iraq:

Denial is a powerful survival mechanism. How else could the human race go on while confronted with daily evidence of its own unspeakable behaviour? Yet some events are so tragic that they demand we stop blocking out the pain and try at the very least to respect the grief of others. And so today we ponder the evil of the five coordinated bombings in northern Iraq on Tuesday that killed more than 250 innocents.

We don’t know who did it, but it’s indicative of the breakdown of Iraqi society that there are multiple suspects in this mass murder. Was it a Sunni extremist group retaliating for the stoning of a Yazidi woman who had dated a Sunni Arab? Or could the motive be religious? The Yazidis are a culturally Kurdish group with a distinct, pre-Islamic religion and are considered heretics by some Muslims.