Bush's Death Squads

[Chris Alger]

The White House web site web site thusly describes the fruits of Iraq's U.S.-installed government under the heading "Remarkable Progress Has Been Made in Iraq in the Last Three Years":

"The reign of a dictator has been replaced by a democratically elected government operating under one of the most progressive constitutions in the Arab world. Millions of Iraqis have joined the political process over the past year alone. . . . Three years ago, Iraqis had no voice in their government or their nation's future. Simple acts like voicing concerns about bad policies or organizing a meeting were denied. Citizens feared arbitrary arrest, torture, and imprisonment. Thousands of innocent Iraqis ended up in mass graves. Today, millions of Iraqis are shaping their own destinies by participating in Iraq's political process."

So how much responsibility will Bush's supporters assign to him for the following, taken from today's NY Times. (Bear in mind the way the level of connection they prefer to use when "linking" Iraq to terrorists).
<ul type="square"> Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in south Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up. In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off. Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, "You want us to blow your brains out, too?"

Mr. Azawi's body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.

In the last month, hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and executed in Baghdad. As Iraqi and American leaders struggle to avert a civil war, the bodies keep piling up. The city's homicide rate has tripled from 11 to 33 a day, military officials said. The period from March 7 to March 21 was typically brutal: at least 191 corpses, many mutilated, surfaced in garbage bins, drainage ditches, minibuses and pickup trucks.

What frightens Iraqis most about these gangland-style killings is the impunity. According to reports filed by family members and more than a dozen interviews, many men were taken in daylight, in public, with witnesses all around. Few cases, if any, have been investigated.

Part of the reason may be that most victims are Sunnis, and there is growing suspicion that they were killed by Shiite death squads backed by government forces in a cycle of sectarian revenge. This allegation has been circulating in Baghdad for months, and as more Sunnis turn up dead, more people are inclined to believe it.

"This is sectarian cleansing," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of Parliament, who has maintained a degree of neutrality between Shiites and Sunnis.

Mr. Othman said there were atrocities on each side. "But what is different is when Shiites get killed by suicide bombs, everyone comes together to fight the Sunni terrorists," he said. " When Shiites kill Sunnis, there is no response, because much of this killing is done by militias connected to the government."

. . . The human rights office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a mostly Sunni group, has cataloged more than 540 cases of Sunni men and a few of Sunni women who were kidnapped and killed since Feb. 22, when a Shiite shrine in Samarra was destroyed, unleashing a wave of sectarian fury.
. . .
While countless Sunni insurgents have been arrested and tried on murder charges, very few Shiite militiamen have been apprehended.

Thamir al-Janabi, who is in charge of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigation department, declined to comment. So did several other Interior Ministry officials.[/list]