What with the death toll being about 35 people are being killed every day -- on the rise over the summer -- and the number of Iraqis killed by the surge is around 300 per day, 10,000 per month by U.S. operations in that country, I am beginning to believe that the Muslims (who have inter-married and lived together for thousands of years) are not killing each other at all.
Any coincidence that the sectarianism lie we are told did not exist until AFTER WE GOT THERE?
I mean, the U.S. has the the Asymmetrical Warfare Group operating in country.
It has also developed programs such as Operation Gladio, Operation Northwoods, the Salvador Option, and the Pentagon's "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group."
And what about the British agents who are the stars of the Prop 201 tutorial?
The "reported" violence yesterday]:
Boston Globe report: "Iraqi police and witnesses said US troops backed by helicopter gunships raided an apartment building at 2 a.m. yesterday in a primarily Sunni neighborhood in southern Baghdad, killing 10 civilians and wounding 12. The US military said it was checking into the report.
In violence north of Baghdad, at least six people were killed when four gunmen wearing military uniforms barged into a busy cafe late Thursday as people were playing a popular game to celebrate the end of the dawn-to-dusk fast during Ramadan."
[Gunmen = Blackwaters!!!
During Ramadan?
Not even the most pious Muslim would disrupt the games, unless he is "Al-CIA-Duh!
And that was a Sunni neighborhood that was hit by U.S. 'copters, so it can't be the operation the New York Times refers to.]
"Two Different Accounts of Deadly Airstrike in Baghdad
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
BAGHDAD, Sept. 28 — For the battered working-class district of Abu Dshir, Ramadan evenings bring a rare air of festivity. The temperature is still warm, but the heat of summer has abated. Families stroll outdoors, and young men play nightly matches of a traditional Ramadan game called mihaidis, in which teams try to find a hidden ring.
As the teams lined up Thursday for the game, neighborhood residents said, a crowd of men gathered to watch. They lighted a large oil lamp which illuminated the street, a small shopping area where grocers and fruit vendors stay open late this time of year.
Two American helicopters hovered overhead, witnesses said.
Moments after the game began, the helicopters opened fire on the crowd, the witnesses said.
Seven men were killed, Sayyid Malik Abadi, the head of the district security committee, who arrived at the scene shortly after the episode, said Friday. He said perhaps an eighth man had died as well, but too many body parts were scattered about to be certain exactly how many were killed.
[MASS-MURDER!!!!!!!!!!!]
“The helicopters watched, and they thought it was a gathering and fired on it,” Mr. Abadi said. “They fired rockets. When people started to run, the helicopters’ machine guns began shooting at the people who were running.”
[And destroying Iraqis love and fun!!!!! Tears to collect, Fatima!]
The American military had a different version of events, which took place in the Saha part of the Abu Dshir district. A spokesman said that earlier in the evening American forces had twice observed episodes when two or three men fired mortars into the neighborhood to the north. After the second episode, the military called for an airstrike.
“We assess possibly two or three were killed or wounded,” said Maj. Brad Leighton, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad. “We were not able to get an accurate assessment,” he added.
“Collateral damage was not observed, but it is a possibility,” Major Leighton said. “If some innocents were killed, we regret that.”
The Abu Dshir district, a district that is majority Shiite, is largely controlled by the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, according to people who live there. However, members of the Mahdi Army in Abu Dshir have been observing the cease-fire ordered by Mr. Sadr in August, neighbors said. No one in the neighborhood appeared to be armed during a reporter’s visit on Friday, although a few wore the black shirt and pants that the Mahdi Army often favors.
Hussein Jassim, 61, a shop owner, said the militia members in the area were no longer active. “All the world knows that the Mahdi Army has been frozen on the orders of our leader Sayyied Moktada al-Sadr, so targeting this gathering, and saying they are Mahdi Army fighters, is all a lie,” he said.
On Friday morning, relatives and neighbors gathered to escort the men’s coffins to the neighborhood’s Shiite mosque. The coffins arrived at the mosque in the back of pickup trucks.
A crowd of men in loose T-shirts and sandals stood silently watching the trucks as they approached. Men from the family stood among the coffins. On one truck was a boy, crying hysterically. Mr. Abadi said three of the boy’s brothers had been killed.
The violence on Thursday occurred a little before 8 p.m., after families had finished breaking the daily Ramadan fast, according to eyewitnesses. For Ahmed Abdullah, 37, a taxi driver, who was also near the scene, confusion mixed with anger and grief. On Friday, he stood watching the coffins being loaded back onto the trucks to be driven for burial to Najaf, a city holy to Shiites.
“It was a real massacre of innocent people, without clear reason,” he said. “I lost my brother-in-law — he was the father of three kids and he was just watching the game. May God revenge the bloodshed of those martyrs.”
[Winning hearts and minds, huh?!!]
Elsewhere in Baghdad on Friday, five bodies were found.
American forces also announced that they had killed a man they described as a senior terrorist in an airstrike in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, on Tuesday. The military said that the man, Abu Osama al-Tunisi, was a leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group whose leadership has foreign ties, according to American intelligence.
In Ankara, Turkey, on Friday, Iraq and Turkey signed an agreement to cooperate in fighting the Kurdish separatist group P.K.K. along their shared border, but the agreement did not include a provision allowing the Turkish Army to conduct cross-border operations against the Kurdish group."
[More U.S. mass-murder with impunity.
Yes, AmeriKa ABSOLVES its MURDERS, and that all starts with the greatest mass-murderer of all:
GEORGE W. BUSH!!]
"Army Sniper Acquitted of Murder in 2 Deaths
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq, Sept. 28 — A military jury acquitted an American Army sniper of murder charges on Friday in connection with the deaths of two Iraqi men during the spring, but convicted him of planting incriminating evidence on one of the bodies after the killing.
Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval Jr. received congratulatory embraces from his two military lawyers after the verdict was announced in a small courtroom here, a short armored Humvee ride from Saddam Hussein’s former palace on the grounds of what is now a sprawling American military base.
Specialist Sandoval, 22, from the First Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, was convicted of planting a coil of copper wire on the body of a man he killed near Iskandariya on April 27 during an operation in a dangerous Sunni Arab region south of Baghdad. The copper roll, what soldiers call “command wire,” is commonly used by insurgents to make or detonate roadside bombs, the leading killer of American forces in Iraq.
The jury of three officers and four enlisted soldiers did not decide on a sentence on Friday; it is scheduled to reconvene Saturday morning to consider a punishment. Army lawyers here said such a crime could be punished with as few as six months in prison, or as long as five years. The jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning its verdict.
Specialist Sandoval has admitted killing the man in April after his team leader, Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, ordered him to fire. The man, who was cutting grass in a field using a scythe when Specialist Sandoval killed him, had been considered by the sniper team’s leaders to be an insurgent trying to disguise himself as a farmer after battling Iraqi Army soldiers minutes earlier.
Army prosecutors had argued that the killing was illegal because the man was unarmed at the time, aside from the rusty scythe, and was not demonstrating hostile intent or a hostile act when Specialist Sandoval killed him with one shot.
The other killing, on May 11, was of a man who had inadvertently walked into the concealed location where Specialist Sandoval, Sergeant Hensley and three other snipers were, near a water pumping house close to Iskandariya. Prosecutors had charged Specialist Sandoval with premeditated murder for that killing because he did nothing to stop another sniper, Sgt. Evan Vela, from shooting the man at close range after the man was detained.
During his court-martial, Specialist Sandoval’s lead lawyer, Capt. Craig Drummond, told the jury that his client had not been part of any plot to kill the man and was standing 100 feet away when Sergeant Vela fired two shots into the man’s head. Sergeant Vela is charged with murder for that killing. After striking a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to testify without incriminating himself on Thursday in Specialist Sandoval’s court-martial, Sergeant Vela took the stand and admitted killing the man, with no encouragement or assistance from anyone except Sergeant Hensley.
Sergeant Hensley’s court-martial, on murder charges related to those two killings and that of a third man, on April 14, is scheduled to begin here in about three weeks."
And here is another picture, not on the web:
Caption: "Finding Proper Graves for Iraq's Unknown Dead... Volunteers buried unidentified bodies yesterday in Najaf, a Shiite holy city about 100 miles south of Baghdad, where most of the bodies were collected in a morgue. Najaf often serves as a site for such burials because its religious authorities offer to preside over them."
Description: I count about six holes in the ground, and see rows of men with corpses wrapped in white shrouds. The men directly in front of the camera are loading a body into the ground.
Things are much better in Iraq since Saddam is gone, 'huh, readers?
These are mass graves of Iraqis AMERICANS KILLED!!!
Speaking of which, where are the mass graves of Saddam's alleged victims?
Wouldn't the Zionist press have made a major focus on them?
Why aren't the Americans digging and making the case to the world, instead of adding to it?
Is it possible, is it, reader, that the mass graves of Saddam -- while not denying political repression and killings -- were ANOTHER, LYING ZIONIST FABRICATION to DEMONIZE and MAKE WAR?
Nawwww, AmeriKa's Zionist press corp would NEVER DO THAT!