As a little reminder to all those "bubble people" who incorrectly think things are going just swell in Iraq. Guess what? This happens almost daily in Iraq. And before you go into your ridiculous rationalizations ("It's only in one part of Iraq. Hospitals are opening. Textbooks! They got textbooks!") just think about this:
What would happen if one, just one, of these bombings happened here in the US?
Do you really think people would just "go about their daily lives" if 50 people were slaughtered in a mall in Boise?
Would this attack not be on the TV for an entire year, non-stop, with massive repercussions throughout the nation?
This happens daily, and the USA is not doing the killing. Why? Because we have started a civil war there, and they are now killing each other in droves. The Iraqi people are much worse off than they were before the war, but the parrots still think things are “turning a corner”. Open your eyes and ears, and turn off political party "news".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...071000129.html
Scores of Sunnis Killed in Baghdad
Neighborhood Residents Describe Signs of Torture
By Joshua Partlow and Saad al-Izzi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 10, 2006; 12:30 PM
BAGHDAD, July 10 -- A deadly wave of violence that began early Sunday in a Sunni Arab neighborhood continued throughout the capital Monday, with car bombs detonating near police patrols and gunmen ambushing a commuter bus.
More than 50 people were killed Sunday when Shiite Muslim militiamen descended on the al-Jihad neighborhood after sunrise, residents said, setting up checkpoints, demanding identification cards and bursting into homes to single out Sunni Arabs to kill. Bodies, some of which appeared to have been tortured, were discarded in the streets, witnesses and Iraqi officials said.
Dozens more people were slain Sunday and Monday in a steady stream of bombings and gun attacks, prompting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to plead for his constituents to "unite as brothers."
"Our destiny is to work together in brotherhood to defeat terrorism and insurgency," Maliki, a Shi'ite, told the Kurdish regional parliament in northern Iraq, according to Reuters. "We have no choice but to defeat those who want to return us to the black days."
Even as he spoke, however, the death tolls were rising. Eleven civilians and three policemen were killed in three different car bombs around Baghdad, including two detonated in the impoverished Shiite slum of Sadr City, said Col. Sami Jasim of the Ministry of Interior. Four people were found shot to death on the commuter bus in Baghdad's Amriya district, Reuters reported, and three others -- including one woman-- were found slain nearby. Three people were killed, and eight wounded, when a car bomb exploded outside the offices of the Kurdish PUK party in Kirkuk, according to the wire service.
Police in the ethnically mixed Dura neighborhood of south Baghdad found the bodies of six unidentified people who had been shot in the head and the chest. Gunmen attacked the bodyguards of a judge in Baghdad, killing two and wounding three, Reuters said, and killed a member of the governing council of Diyala Province after attacking his motorcade.
The spurt of killings began on a day when the U.S. military announced
charges against five soldiers in the alleged rape and murder of a girl and the killing of three members of her family in the southern Iraqi town of Mahmudiyah.
Sunni politicians described the attacks as one of the deadliest waves of murder since the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. They said the bloodshedgravely exacerbated the problems in Baghdad, where killings occur almost daily, and they accused Iraqi police of collaborating with Shiite militiamen in the violence.
"This is a new step. A red line has been crossed," said Alaa Makky, a Sunni member of parliament. "People have been killed in the streets; now they are killed inside their homes."
One neighborhood resident, Hazim al-Rawi, said he gathered up his family and fled after seeing 15 bodies outside his home.
"Some of them were tortured with drills," Rawi said of the bodies. "Some of them were hanged by ropes."
Hours after the rampage, attackers struck back, detonating two car bombs near a Shiite mosque. At least 12 people were killed, including five policemen, and 18 were wounded, according to Lt. Col. Memduh Abdulla of the Rusafa police district. The Associated Press reported that 17 people were killed and 38 hurt.
"We've said it several times that there are people who want to create civil war," Wafiq al-Samarrae, an adviser to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, said on al-Jazeera television. "Today, this country is on the edge of civil war, not sectarian strife."
Sectarian killings have escalated sharply across Iraq sincea bomb destroyed a revered golden-domed Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22. That bombing prompted reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques and pushed the country further toward all-out civil war.
Police picked up 57 bodies from Sunday the al-Jihad neighborhood, according to Ali Hussein, a commando with the Interior Ministry who ferried bodies to Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital. He said three Interior Ministry policemen were killed as well. Gen. Saad Mohammed al-Tamini of the Interior Ministry confirmed that more than 50 people were killed.
But a U.S. military spokesman said that Iraqi national police and American soldiers found 11 dead Iraqis in three locations in the neighborhood. The higher casualty reports "do not marry up with what we have found," Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington said.
Some of the corpses that littered the streets lay handcuffed, pocked with bullet holes, while others were pierced with bolts and nails, witnesses said.
Iraqi officials and neighborhood residents identified the gunmen who swarmed the neighborhood as members of the Mahdi Army, the powerful militia controlled by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. In the past three days, Iraqi troops, with the support of U.S.-led forces, have raided the homes of militiamen and detained some of their leaders.
U.S. commanders and diplomats say Sadr and his militia constitute one of the gravest threats to Iraq's security. Two years ago, U.S. forces fought Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad and in the southern holy city of Najaf. Sadr also holds considerable sway over the political system, with ties to more than 30 members of parliament and several cabinet ministers.
On Sunday, Iraq's deputy prime minister for security affairs, Salam al-Zobaie, accused the Defense and Interior ministries of working with the militias to carry out the killings.
"Interior and Defense ministries are infiltrated, and there are officials who lead brigades who are involved in this," Zobaie said in an interview on al-Jazeera. "What is happening now is an ugly slaughter."
After the killings, Sadr appealed for calm but criticized what he called a "Western scheme" that foments "a civil and sectarian war among brothers."
"Iraq is passing through a critical phase and a worsening security situation in spite of the presence of an independent government," Sadr said in a statement. "I call on all parties, both governmental and popular, to exercise self-control first, and to shoulder their responsibility before God and society."
Other officials in Sadr's organization condemned the killings in al-Jihad and denied that the Mahdi Army was involved.
"We regret the statements made by some Sunni Arabs who said that the Mahdi Army militia had conducted the raid at Jihad and killed the innocent people there," said Riyadh al-Nouri, a top aide to Sadr and his brother-in-law. "If the Mahdi Army wanted to enter into a fight, Iraq would become a blood bath."
In al-Jihad, a predominantly Sunni neighborhood along the road to Baghdad International Airport, police in white pickup trucks patrolled the roads. Fighters gathered in the streets holding rocket launchers and belts of machine-gun ammunition while helicopters swarmed overhead. A hot wind scoured the neighborhood, scattering the black smoke that billowed from burning tires.
The Iraqi government later imposed a daytime curfew in the neighborhood, and mosque loudspeakers broadcast warnings that residents should flee or they would be killed.
Hayider Hussein, a resident, said that outside his house, militiamen were milling around a minibus in which the bodies of the driver and a dozen passengers could be seen.
"They were all shot in the head," he said.
Ali Muhsin, 58, a retiree who lives in the neighborhood, said he saw gunmen in three cars pull up near his house and begin shooting people. Four corpses lay on the ground about 100 yards from his door and he saw four other people shot at a vegetable market nearby, he said.
Muhsin described seeing gunmen get out of a sedan, remove two bodies from the trunk "and throw them on the street."
Residents said the rampage was triggered by a car bomb attack on the Shiite al-Zahra mosque Saturday night, expanding into door-to-door pursuit of Sunnis by Shiites.
Outside the morgue at the Yarmouk Hospital, a distraught woman wearing a red head scarf searched for her missing brother. At 7 a.m., she said, black-clad gunmen broke into her house and demanded to know the family's tribal name. When her brother responded "Jubour," one of the gunmen said, "You are definitely Sunnis."
"I swear on Hussein, I swear on Ali, that we are Shiites," her brother, Muzahim Salman, pleaded, referring to relatives of the prophet Muhammad who are revered by Shiites.
The gunmen locked the woman, who refused to give her full name, and her mother in a room before kidnapping her brother. A half-hour later, she said, she called her brother's cellphone.
"The man who answered said: 'We are the Mahdi Army. We killed your brother. Go to the morgue and pick up his body.' "
