WaPo: Iraqi Government Suppressing Body Counts in Civil War

[BurtWorm]

Remember a couple of weeks ago when the Post was laughed at for saying 1,300 people had been killed in the aftermath of the Askariya Mosque when everyone else was giving much, much lower official counts? Now the Post, after investigating the discrepancy, says there's evidence the Iraqi government is suppressing the body counts.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802692_pf.html


The widely differing tolls reflect acute political sensitivity at a time when Iraq's three-year-old conflict is undergoing a fundamental shift: Execution-style killings of the kind frequently blamed on police or Shiite militias allied with the government appear to be killing more Iraqis than bombings of government and civilian targets by Sunni Arab insurgents.

Since Jan. 30, 2005, when Iraq held its first parliamentary elections since President Saddam Hussein was ousted almost two years earlier, the country's Shiite majority has controlled the largest bloc in parliament and the most powerful positions in the cabinet. The SCIRI is the dominant member of the governing Shiite coalition and holds several key cabinet portfolios, including the Interior Ministry, which oversees Iraq's police.

The Health Ministry, which operates the Baghdad morgue and government hospitals, is in the hands of a religious party headed by Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose militia, the Mahdi Army, waged two armed uprisings against U.S. forces in 2004. Since the Samarra bombing, the Mahdi Army has been widely accused of kidnapping and killing Sunni men. Families collecting bodies at the morgue last week described gunmen in the black clothes associated with Sadr's militia coming to Sunni homes or to mosques and taking men away.

Sadr's organization has denied any connection with the killings, saying crimes were being committed by people who had dressed in black to focus blame on the Mahdi Army.

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<There's much more to the article.>

[BurtWorm]

1. kick

[BurtWorm]

2. Folks, this is being underreported in the media.

If this is true, the Iraqi government would appear now to be officially at the service of Sadr and his militia.

[BurtWorm]

3. kick