You won't see this story in the media in this country

[bigdarryl]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article347806.ece

[Virginia Dare]

1. Mission Accomplished...eom

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Injuries caused by burning cigarettes? Has George Bush been at work?

ohn Pace, who left Baghdad two weeks ago, told The Independent on Sunday that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the city's mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes.

In the fall of 1967, when huge numbers of college students were marching on Washington to protest the Vietnam War, Bush was quoted in the New York Times defending the branding of fraternity pledges with a hot coat hanger, saying the resulting wounds resembled "only a cigarette burn."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072799.htm

[leftofthedial]

3. repuke administration propping up regime that uses death squads

where have I heard this before?

Hmm....

and why do all the same names (Rumsfeld, Negroponte, Cheney) keep popping up whenever this is going on?

[Demeter]

4. This Should Be Reported!

Maybe smuggle in pictures of the bodies and the torture evidence?

[Tigress DEM]

5. ....for no other reason than that they are Shia

Sounds like genocide to me, but I confess ignorance. Which is the smaller population? I thought the Sunni's were and that they were being targeted quite a bit initially and kept away from the elections? If that is the case, then this civil war has been on since shortly after we plopped our troops down on a larger scale than they have ever reported before.

Good catch.


<snip>
Last week's attack on the Golden Mosque is only the latest in a long series of outrages against the Shia community. They started in August 2003 when Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, then leader of Sciri, was killed, along with more than 100 of his followers by a suicide bomber in a vehicle outside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf. There have been repeated massacres of the Shia ever since - some targeting the security forces, such as the attacks on queues of young men trying to join the police or army, but others, such as the slaughter of Shia day labourers waiting for a day's employment, for no other reason than that they are Shia.

[banana republican]

6. I see that negropontie is hard at work.... n/t

[neoblues]

7. Misguided News... Misguided President... Holy Confusion.

As for coverage by U.S. News organizations... alas, only found one (and, curiously, one by that very name):
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060220/20iraq.htm

Though it's certainly got considerable coverage elsewhere through foreign and alternative news sources... and even PBS late last year.

Wonder exactly why the main U.S. media/news sources are avoiding this--sure, I guess it does make the Bush plan for creating an IRAQI mini-me democracy all the more hopeless and awash with corruption and human rights abuses... Supporting such things, alas, is a sort of historical pattern for our government--seeking it's own political ends, it seems, is more important than any "puny" concerns about who we climb in bed with.

No surprise that Bush wouldn't care... he's too fervently carrying out the "will of God" (His own personal, imaginary God--the one who actually communicates with him, and him alone--his fevered little mind anyway. Yes, the very God who "made him" President, nevermind that It did so through dirty tricks and election fraud... yep, it's the will of that God; the God he and a number of other "Conservative Christians" have mistaken for being the same one as described in the Christian Bible... (so, guess which "God" would be left--in their religious framework?)). Convenient, isn't it, that their God's purposes just happen to be in alignment with those of the Neocons? Plainly, to the extent they're acting out of real or pretend religious piety instead of their other common motivations such as personal greed and lust for power, they've been following a horned demi-God.

[Pachamama]

8. it is clearly becoming very difficult to use American or British troops to

Civil War? Not just Civil War in Iraq, but it sounds like Genocide is going on too....

PS: Death Squads? Sounds like Negroponte left his "fingerprints" there as part of his Viceroy job...