>I'd call the car bombings "barbaric", but I wouldn't call them "nihilistic".
Christian Parenti's used the word "nihilistic" too - the insurgents he'd talked to had no positive vision for Iraq at all. When he asked them what their ideology was, they said "Islam" and "Ba'athism." When he asked what that meant, they couldn't elaborate. He said they'd rather destroy Iraq than let the US have it.
Doug