At The NewsHour (PBS) blog (audio link), The New York Times' Anthony Shadid explained the bombings to Gwen Ifill:
There were 3 bombings today in Baghdad. They were detonated about 9 minutes apart. And they struck landmark hotels in the capital. It's part of the campaign that's been going on basically since last August, aimed at undermining the sense of government control in Baghdad. In the past, they've struck ministries, government offiices, a courthouse, a bank, colleges and this seemed to open up a new front in that campaign in some sense by striking landmark hotels that pretty much everyone knows in Baghdad and that also cater to foreigners -- foregin reporters businessmen and, in time, election observers for the vote on March 7th for a new parliament.
On the spot reports and reflections were filed by NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and Quil Lawrence, an Iraqi correspondent for McClatchy at Inside Iraq, Leila Fadel (Washington Post), Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times), the Times of London's Oliver August, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro (NPR's Morning Edition. link has text and transcript), and James Hider (Times of London), an Iraqi correspondent with McClatchy Newspapers.
As Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) and Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reported, the US military blames the bombings on al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
The Baghdad bombings -- the high profile ones -- are increasing in frequency with less of a lapse between them. Nouri al-Maliki's 'law and order' re-election campaign appears in jeopardy. Little Nouri has set himself up as the New Saddam and, therefore, he is attempting to force his opponents out of the elections planned for March 7th.
Aiding him is Ahmed Chalabi who denies all rumors that he was caught either giving or recieving oral sex from boy pal Ali al-Lami. Whenever the two stop doing whatever it is that they are doing privately (they deny any and all sexual contact and relations with one another), they use the extra-legal Accountability and Justice Committee to ban candidates from the elections.
Saturday AP reported that "Awakening" ("Sons Of Iraq," Sahwa) leader Ahmed Abu Risha is floating the notion of a Sunni boycott for the intended elections and he tells AP that Sunnis "will not care about the eleciton, they will ignore it, maybe, if these decisions [bannings] stand."
The elections may or may not take place, but the violence never ends. Sunday 12 Iraqis were reported dead and 5 were reported wounded; Monday 36 dead and 71 wounded; Tuesday 28 were reported dead (five of those the increase in the death toll from Monday's Baghdad bombings) and 94 wounded; Wednesday 6 people were reported dead and 8 wounded (not including 1 US soldier who was also wounded on Wednesday); Thursday 2 were reported dead and 11 were reported wounded; Friday 6 were reported wounded; and Saturday 4 were reported dead and 31 wounded.
Friday, the US military announced: "A United States Division-South Soldier died Jan. 28 of noncombat related injuries. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The names of service members are announced through the U.S. Department of Defense official website [. . .] The announcements are made on the Web site no earlier than 24 hours after notification of the service member's primary next of kin. The incident is under investigation." (There may have been a second announced death.)