How did Bush manage to greatly reduce the number of dead Iraqis the past few months?

[NNN0LHI]

Poll question: How did Bush manage to greatly reduce the number of dead Iraqis the past few months?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120300881.html

Iraq's Death Squads

Sunday, December 4, 2005; Page B06

OF ALL THE bloodshed in Iraq, none may be more disturbing than the campaign of torture and murder being conducted by U.S.-trained government police forces. Reports last week in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times chronicled how Iraqi Interior Ministry commando and police units have been infiltrated by two Shiite militias, which have been conducting ethnic cleansing and rounding up Sunnis suspected of supporting the insurgency. Hundreds of bodies have been appearing along roadsides and in garbage dumps, some with acid burns or with holes drilled in them. According to the searing account by Solomon Moore of the Los Angeles Times, "the Baghdad morgue reports that dozens of bodies arrive at the same time on a weekly basis, including scores of corpses with wrists bound by police handcuffs." The reports followed a raid two weeks ago by U.S. troops on a clandestine Baghdad prison run by the Interior Ministry, where some 170 men, most of them Sunni and most of them starved or tortured, were found.

The danger this development poses to Iraq, and to the prospects of a successful end to the U.S. mission there, ought to be obvious. A dirty war conducted by the Iraqi government against one ethnic group will make civil war inevitable. It will render impossible a political accord among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, while increasing the likelihood that Iraq will splinter. U.S. commanders will be unable to hand responsibility off to Iraqi forces without inviting a bloodbath, and the training mission that President Bush described at length in his speech on Wednesday will be utterly discredited. If there is to be any chance of achieving Mr. Bush's goals of a united and democratic Iraq that protects the rights of its minorities, the state-sponsored death squads and torture chambers must be dismantled. snip

Worse, Mr. Rumsfeld maintained that "the United States does not have a responsibility" to do anything about the crimes of the police forces it established and trained, other than "report it." Even the man he selected to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, could not support such an irresponsible position. Standing alongside Mr. Rumsfeld, he asserted that "it is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it."

[Rageneau]

1. We do not torture. Iraqis do not die.

[WCGreen]

2. Cause the Ethnic cleansing is just about done....

There ain't no one else to kill...

[Botany]

3. This is because some areas have been ethnically cleansed

but the killing still goes on


http://warnewstoday.blogspot.com/index.html

Tuesday, October 30, 2007
War News for Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Baghdad:
#1: In 2006, there were 386 sniper attacks on coalition forces, according to data from the Multi-National Force-Iraq headquarters in Iraq. Through Oct. 26 of this year, there were 269 sniper attacks, the figures show. However, the rate of sniper attacks has dropped slightly in 2007 and fallen dramatically in the past four months, according to military records given to USA TODAY.

#2: The editor of a Baghdad weekly newspaper was murdered at the weekend, Iraq's Journalistic Freedoms Observatory said on Tuesday. The Iraqi non-governmental organization said Shehab Mohammed al-Hiti, a Sunni Arab editor of the al-Youm newspaper, was last seen leaving his home in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Jamiaa on Saturday. He was heading for the newspaper's office in the centre of the capital. Iraqi security forces found his body later that day in the northern Baghdad district of Ur, which is a Shi'ite neighborhood. In a statement the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory did not say how he had been killed.

#3: a civilian was killed and another wounded Monday evening when a US patrol fired at them in the centre of the city of Kut, the capital of the province of Wasit south-east of Baghdad, police sources were quoted as saying by VOI. "A US patrol, which was driving through the streets of Kut, fired at a civilian vehicle Monday evening at an intersection in the district of Kafat, north of the city, killing the driver and critically injuring a passenger," the sources said.

#4: From the invasion in March 2003 through Oct. 1, 2007, more than 36,000 U.S. troops were evacuated from Iraq. More than 77 percent of the evacuations were for illnesses or noncombat injuries, according to data from the Department of Defense, Deployment Health Support Directorate.

#5: A bomb inside a minibus wounded two people on a highway in eastern Baghdad, police said.

#6: Two policemen were wounded when a mortar round landed in the Mansour district of western Baghdad, police said.

#7: A militant killed one street cleaner and wounded six others when he threw a hand grenade at their vehicle in eastern Baghdad's Zayouna neighbourhood, police said.

#8: Four bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad on Monday, police said.

#9: A bomb in a minibus killed one person and wounded four others in the central Baghdad Alawi bus terminal, police said.

#10: U.S. forces killed four suspected militants and detained 17 in operations on Monday and Tuesday targeting al Qaeda in central and northern Iraq, the U.S. military said.


Najaf:
#1: Gunmen killed a police lieutenant on Monday in the holy city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

Local police forces found the body of a captain from Najaf's Thu al-Faqqar Brigade near his house in al-Jamiyya neighborhood in the north of the city," the source, who requested anonymity, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq

#2: Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen shot down a policeman from Najaf police force at an early hour on Tuesday morning in al-Abbasiya district in the east of the city, the same source indicated.


Kut:
#1: One man was killed and another seriously wounded by soldiers of a U.S. patrol who opened fire at them at an intersection in central Kut without any apparent motives, police said on Tuesday. "A U.S. patrol roaming the streets of Kut opened fire at a civilian vehicle on Monday evening at the al-Kafaat intersection, killing the driver and seriously wounding another passenger," a security source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq


Samarra:
#1: Four policemen were killed and eight others wounded when a car bomb exploded near their patrol in Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

#2: Clashes erupted on Tuesday morning between unidentified gunmen and security forces of the Iraqi interior ministry in the city of Samarra, an official security source said. No information was immediately obtained about casualties, the source said. "Unidentified gunmen attacked security forces headquarters in Samarra with RPG-7 missiles but no casualties were revealed yet," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq


Kirkuk:
#1: A body was found shot and tortured on Monday night near the city of Kirkuk, police said.

#2: Gunmen killed an off-duty policeman in a drive-by shooting in central Kirkuk, police said.


Mosul:
#1: Police said they found four bodies in the northern city of Mosul.

[Yukari Yakumo]

4. We're on month 3 of al-Sadr's 6 month cease fire. {nt}

uguu

[NNN0LHI]

5. Sadr's thugs have infiltrated the U.S.-trained government police forces

Looks like he did tell the death squads to stand down.

Don

[KG]

6. they just aren't counting them.

[Imagevision]

7. Get real! ->the story is dated> December 4, 2005

no comment!

[MiniMe]

8. He just doesn't count them all anymore

[applegrove]

9. Ethnic cleansing and partnering with Sunni groups with a promise of

compromised governance at some point in the future. In other words undoing debathification to a degree.