WaPo: It's Bad. It's Real Bad. Shiites Suppress Body Counts.

[kpete]

Official Says Shiite Party Suppressed Body Count

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 9, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD, March 8 -- Days after the bombing of a Shiite shrine unleashed a wave of retaliatory killings of Sunnis, the leading Shiite party in Iraq's governing coalition directed the Health Ministry to stop tabulating execution-style shootings, according to a ministry official familiar with the recording of deaths.

The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared for his safety, said a representative of the Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, ordered that government hospitals and morgues catalogue deaths caused by bombings or clashes with insurgents, but not by execution-style shootings.


The Feb. 22 bombing of the Shiites' Askariya shrine in Samarra set off a wave of retaliatory violence against Sunnis. The resulting death toll is in question. (By Khalid Mohammed -- Associated Press)


A statement this week by the U.N. human rights department in Baghdad appeared to support the account of the Health Ministry official. The agency said it had received information about Baghdad's main morgue -- where victims of fatal shootings are taken -- that indicated "the current acting director is under pressure by the Interior Ministry in order not to reveal such information and to minimize the number of casualties."

The U.N. office said it had not confirmed the information about the morgue and had been unable so far to obtain an accounting of the toll from Iraqi authorities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802692.html?nav=rss_email/components
via:http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/9/0313/11703

[woodsprite]

1. Guess they learned a lesson from Rummy and * n/t

[DainBramaged]

2. If they don't report it, it never happened, dontcha know.

[NNN0LHI]

3. All this is being done with the occupiers tacit approval

Otherwise they would stop it. Therefore the occupiers are responsible for the genocide that is occurring right now in Iraq. War crimes trials can be hell.

Don

[Nordmadr]

4. but, but the Bush admin said the media reports of deaths were

being exaggerated...
:sarcasm:

Olafr

[Marie26]

5. Don't the Shiite militias

use executions? It seems like a good way to try to assign more of the blame to the Sunnis.