Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Atrocity in Baghdad (NYT)

[laststeamtrain]

March 26, 2006
Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Atrocity in Baghdad
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 — Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in southern 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 bodies, many mutilated, surfaced in garbage bins, drainage ditches, minibuses and pickup trucks.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/international/middleeast/26bodies.html?ei=5070&en=3b32e142b38324ea&ex=1143954000&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print

You know? This IS 'good news' for the crazies like Daniel Pipes who want civil war in Iraq.

[brokensymmetry]

1. But look at the bright side.

Somewhere in Iraq, a school has been painted. :sarcasm: