Monday, March 13, 2006
Shiite Vigilantes Kill Men in Baghdad Streets
So when will this officially become a civil war? Because this sure sounds like a civil war to me:
It is becoming more and more apparent that the Iraqi government cannot keep the peace in Iraq. U.S. troops have pulled back, a move which has decreased U.S. casualties for the month of March, but has also created this "authority vaccuum" which allows Shiite vigilante justice to occur on Baghdad streets in the middle of the day or Shiite death squads to be working out of the Interior Ministry or Sunni insurgents to garrot entire Shiite families and dump their bodies in the streets.
And the preznit and his team in the White House are turning to Iran?
Shiite vigilantes seized four men suspected of terrorist attacks, interrogated them, beat them, executed them and left their bodies hanging from lampposts in a Shiite slum today, according to witnesses and government officials.
The graphic display of street justice was the first response to a coordinated attack on Sunday evening that killed more than 50 civilians in a Shiite market, and it seemed to only add to the seeping sense of lawlessness.
In Sadr City, the Shiite slum that is essentially a city within a city, government forces have vanished. The streets are ruled by aggressive teenagers with shiny soccer jerseys and machine guns. They poke their heads into cars and detain whom they want. Mosques blare for American troops to stay out. Increasingly, the Americans have been doing just that.
...
Across town in a busy shopping area in western Baghdad, a 15-minute gunfight broke out between security contractors, more evidence of the authority vacuum. According to an Iraqi interior ministry spokesman who declined to give his name, armed guards for a cellphone company killed two guards for an Iraqi politician after a roadside "misunderstanding."
Meanwhile, the violence continued, with remote-controlled bombs exploding in Baghdad, Tikrit and a Kurdish neighborhood in Kirkuk, which had been thought to be among the safest in the city. Also, a stray mortar slammed into a Baghdad house, killing a young girl.
It is becoming more and more apparent that the Iraqi government cannot keep the peace in Iraq. U.S. troops have pulled back, a move which has decreased U.S. casualties for the month of March, but has also created this "authority vaccuum" which allows Shiite vigilante justice to occur on Baghdad streets in the middle of the day or Shiite death squads to be working out of the Interior Ministry or Sunni insurgents to garrot entire Shiite families and dump their bodies in the streets.
And the preznit and his team in the White House are turning to Iran?
