As the day's body count nears 100, Democrats accuse Bush of committing to an unwinnable war and straining the Army.
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Julian E. Barnes
Los Angeles Times, 14 September 2006
BAGHDAD — On a day in which nearly 100 bodies attested to Iraq's unbridled violence, Democrats stepped up their response to President Bush's policies, with former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski calling the war "unwinnable."
Iraqi officials announced they had found the bodies of 60 men, some of whom had been shot in the head after being tortured, over the previous 24 hours. They said there was no single massacre or mass execution. Rather, the slaughter in two Baghdad neighborhoods was probably the result of multiple roving assassination teams, they said.
In addition to the apparent executions, a pair of car bombs and other violence took at least 35 lives and left scores injured Wednesday, officials said. U.S. authorities reported the deaths of two more American soldiers, one killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad and the other killed in action in Al Anbar province, the hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency in western Iraq.
In his televised speech to the nation Monday, Bush said that U.S. security "depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad," setting a theme that Republicans hope will sustain support for the war and their candidates between now and November's elections.
Democrats, who have been divided in their own policy toward the war, offered a two-pronged response Wednesday. Brzezinski, the national security advisor under President Carter, accused the administration of committing the country to an unachievable goal. The Bush administration's aim of creating "a secular, stable, democratic Iraq" is "simply unreal," Brzezinski said during an appearance on Capitol Hill with retired Gen. Wesley Clark, the commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization under President Clinton.
Meantime, Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a conservative Democrat and former Marine who has become an outspoken critic of the war, said that Iraq had become a crushing burden on the U.S. Army. The war has created equipment shortages and badly strained soldiers as well as Marines, Murtha said.
Army officials responded in a statement that "we are an Army at war and there is a cost to war."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan seemed to join the debate, saying at a news conference in New York that many leaders he had met with on a recent trip to the Middle East felt that the invasion of Iraq "has been a real disaster" that has destabilized the region. But they were divided on whether a departure of U.S. forces would make matters better or worse, he said.
"In a way, the U.S. has found itself in the position where it cannot stay, and it cannot leave," Annan said.
With the war shaping up as the dominant issue in the fall election, the administration and its critics have sought to shape public perception of what the U.S. ambassador here, Zalmay Khalilzad, has labeled the Battle of Baghdad.
The administration's efforts were notable Wednesday, as U.S. and Iraqi authorities disputed each other's accounts of the day's high death toll.
A U.S. military spokesman said the body count for the 24-hour period in question was actually about half of that reported by Iraqi officials. The dispute underscored how statistics on killings here have become hotly contested, particularly since the U.S. military launched a highly publicized security effort earlier in the summer. The security plan included the deployment of 8,000 additional U.S. troops to patrol with Iraqi forces in an effort to bring order to the capital.
"We remain confident that these joint operations continue to be effective in reducing the violence in Baghdad," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman here.
On the Iraqi side, Muayed Matrood, an official at the besieged Baghdad morgue, said Wednesday's body count showed that "the phenomenon of a large number of unidentified and tortured corpses has returned back to Baghdad."
The morgue is due to receive two new refrigeration facilities to help handle the onslaught of corpses. "This is the first time in weeks that a number as large as this has been found within a day," Matrood said.
The Baghdad morgue had reported receiving about 17% fewer bodies in August than in July. That figure had created expectations that a downward trend could continue into this month. But violence increased markedly in the last few days of August and has continued unabated since then, sapping hope that the wanton killings would abate.
The large toll caused hardly a ripple in a capital that seems anesthetized to grim tidings. People went about their business, the government convened meetings, and the discovered corpses didn't amount to major news.
The 60 bodies were found scattered in two separate neighborhoods, Karkh, a mostly Sunni Muslim area in western Baghdad, where 43 were discovered, and Rusafa, a mostly Shiite Muslim area in eastern Baghdad, where 17 were found.
Most of the victims had gunshot wounds to the head. Some of the bodies were handcuffed and blindfolded and showed signs of torture.
Death squads stalk the streets of this once-tolerant capital, authorities say, targeting victims because of their sect. Many Iraqis fear leaving their neighborhoods, which are increasingly guarded by sectarian militias.
Shiite militiamen are widely regarded as the capital's principal executioners, evoking deep fear among terrorized Sunni Arabs. Other groups, mostly Sunni, have continued their campaign of bombings and other attacks on government officials, most of whom are Shiite.
On Wednesday, a pair of car bombs apparently targeting police killed at least 19 people and wounded 76 in Baghdad, authorities said. One car bomb detonated in a large square near the main headquarters of Baghdad's traffic police department, and the other exploded near a police patrol in the Zayona district.
More than a dozen other people were reported killed by small-arms fire and mortar rounds in Baghdad and its environs.
Among those killed was Safaa Ismael Enad, 31, a freelance photographer who was accosted by two gunmen in a photo studio. The gunmen asked for him by name, a colleague said, before they opened fire.
In all, 79 journalists and 28 media support workers have been killed in Iraq since the war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy group.
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Citation: Patrick J. McDonnell and Julian E. Barnes. "Death Toll Soars in Baghdad," Los Angeles Times, 14 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-iraq14sep14,1,196935.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
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