On October 31, Islamist extremists took hostage the congregation of Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad and slaughtered 58 men, women and children, wounding 78 others. Most of the slain were worshipers, and two were priests. The tragedy generated a weak response from the Obama administration: Robert Gibbs called it a “senseless act of hostage taking and violence by terrorists linked to al Qaeda in Iraq.”
A much stronger response, however, came from Representatives Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Frank Wolf (R-VA), who wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton less than a week after the tragedy. The letter, signed by nine members of Congress, explained that the attack needed to be understood apart from the broader context of extremist violence in Iraq:
