More Sunnis joining Iraq's National Police (and summary executions for 10 suspects)

[Barrett808]

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

More Sunnis joining Iraq's National Police
By Mike Tharp | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Some 800 Sunni Muslims are among 2,000 newly trained recruits in the Iraqi National Police, a force that a Pentagon report a year ago called a brutal organization infiltrated by Shiite militias and even death squads.

Another 2,000 Sunnis are expected to be trained and to join the National Police in coming months, a U.S. general in Iraq said Thursday.

America's top military policeman in Iraq, Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, praised the move by Iraqi President Nouri al Maliki as creating "a whole different National Police from a year ago."

The Shiite-dominated national police have long been criticized as a sectarian force and accused of extrajudicial killings of Sunnis and former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the most powerful Shiite party in the country, has been backed by the Bush administration, and most of its militia members have been absorbed into Iraqi security forces, particularly National Police.

...

In a bizarre incident in Tikrit, also in northern Iraq, security officials said they discovered at least 10 men wearing explosive vests and gear hidden in a tanker truck, police said. After a gun battle between Iraqi forces and the driver and a passenger in the truck, both of whom were killed, the security forces found the other men inside and executed them, police officials said.

According to a local police official, however, the identities of the men inside the tanker who were executed remained unknown. He speculated that they were being "smuggled away from or to some destination unknown as yet."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/38899.html

[LynnTheDem]

1. Just like under Saddam. Only with less food, less water, less medical supplies,

less doctors, less electricity, less jobs, less standing buildings and towns and cities...

Just like under Saddam.

Only worse.

Dear people of Iraq;

Don't forget to send your "debt of gratitude" to George W. bUsh. Personally would be best.