I grew up reading comic books wanting to be a superhero. Comics taught me that those who speak the truth are heroes, all the rest are liars.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Iraq - The Un-Civil War

Today in Iraq : more death...

  • Bodies of at least 87 people killed by execution-style shootings found in past 24 hours.
  • Partial macabre breakdown of the mass killings mentioned above:
  • Fourteen bodies — handcuffed and shot and dressed only in underwear —discovered in southeast Baghdad.
  • Bodies of 15 strangled men found in west Baghdad.
  • 29 bodies found stacked in mass grave in eastern Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad.
  • One person killed and eight wounded when roadside bomb goes off near group of pilgrims on main road between Baghdad and Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad.
  • Unkown gunmen kill intelligence police in Al-Amirya west Baghdad.
    Police officer dies in hospital after being shot by gunmen at Al-Zaafaraniya south Baghdad.
  • Editor of Iraqi magazine killed by gunmen in Al-Seidiya west Baghdad.
  • Three bodies with gunshot wounds found in Mosul.

Not long after defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld states unambiguously that U.S. forces will stand by if the nascent civil war in Iraq accelerates, we read this:

"On Monday, in Sadr City, the Shiite section in Baghdad where the terrorist suspects were executed, government forces vanished. The streets are ruled by aggressive teenagers with shiny soccer jerseys and machine guns.They set up roadblocks and poke their heads into cars and detain whomever they want Mosques blare warnings on loudspeakers for American troops to stay out. Increasingly, the Americans have been doing just that.

There seems to be no minimum age to join the action. A playful boy named Musa, who said he was 11 but looked about 8, was part of a 4-foot-tall militia struggling to drag chunks of concrete into the street to block cars on Monday."We're guarding the road," Musa explained. He was carrying a toy pistol. Some of the other boys had real ones."




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