“On March 2 [2004], suicide bombings killed at least 180 Shiite worshipers in Karbala and Baghdad, the single deadliest day since the overthrow of Saddam’s regime. Senior officials in the American occupation authority pointed a finger at [al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi. But the angry Shiite survivors of the mosque attacks shouted their curses not against the Sunni militants who had fueled the violence since the fall of Baghdad, or against foreign jihadists, but against the American occupiers. ‘The Americans have done nothing for us,’ ran the mantra of the day.”
– Todd S. Purdum and The New York Times Staff, A Time of Our Choosing, Page 292