WP,pg1: Iraqi Colonel Who Bridged Sectarian Divide Killed: Office bombed

[DeepModem Mom]

Iraqi Colonel Who Bridged Sectarian Divide Is Killed
Officer Bridged Sectarian Divide
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 14, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Oct. 13 -- Operating between the insurgent Sunni Arab suburbs of Baghdad and the Shiite militia-dominated south, Col. Salam al-Mamuri and his Scorpion commando team were a rarity among Iraqi security forces, American and Iraqi colleagues said: a police unit fighting on both sides of the country's sectarian divide.

On Friday, a bomb blew apart Mamuri and an aide at the Scorpions' headquarters in the southern city of Hilla. The attack ended the life of a broadly respected commander who had been one of the longest-serving and longest-surviving men in a cadre of Iraqi army veterans struggling to restore law and order after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Mamuri's comparative evenhandedness enforcing the law may have earned him an enemy within his own sect, the Shiites. Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani in Baghdad called it a "possibility and a probability" that the assassination was at least in part an inside job, because the killer was able to gain access to Mamuri's office to plant the bomb.

Mamuri had founded the Scorpion brigade soon after Americans arrived and had led it ever since....The Scorpions were made up of about 800 men, most of them Shiites from Hilla. The unit, which Bolani called "one of the most important and vital of the Ministry of Interior," has remained relatively stable and cohesive since its early days, as other U.S. efforts to build Iraqi security forces have collapsed....

***

"They are literally the only Iraqi unit under arms in the south that is completely independent of the political parties and the militias," a Special Forces intelligence specialist and medic said this year. "Everyone else -- the police, the army -- is playing ball for somebody. They won't."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/13/AR2006101301752.html

[TacticalPeek]

1. K&R

:kick:

[Erika]

2. What an F'n mess n/t

[rodeodance]

3. Once we leave--all those in office will be killed as they are percieved to

have helped the 'coalition"/US/WEST.

I friend posed this to me the other day--rather a knee-jerker??

[enigma000]

4. But where will the line be drawn?

Is serving in the government a "Quisling" offense and will get you killed? How about being elected to the Iraqi parliament? A member of the Iraqi Army? The police force? What if you voted in last year's elections?

Many, many Iraqis have worked with the occupation forces.