Army Gen. George Casey says that sectarian violence in Iraq has been
greatly overstated, and disputes fatality figures released by
The Washington Post since last month's bombing of the Shiite Askariya shrine.
Although terrorists continue to threaten Iraq's stability, they "failed" to push the country into civil war with the mosque bombing, Casey said. He put the number of civilians killed in the sectarian violence following the attack at "about 350," a toll that he said was "unacceptable" but far lower than the 1,300 dead reported by morgue workers in Baghdad. Figures given by Iraqi government officials have ranged from about 380 to more than 1,000 killed during the few days after the bombing....
"So has there been violence and terrorism here in Iraq in the wake of the Samarra bombings?" he asked rhetorically. "Clearly. Is the violence out of control? Clearly not. Now, it appears that the crisis has passed. But we all should be clear Iraqis remain under threat of terrorist attack."
The crisis has passed? Tell that to the families of the 25 factory and power plant workers killed yesterday south of Baghdad following an attack by a "large group of insurgents."
"Dozens of armed men, who operate in Diyala province, entered the town at 7 p.m.," said Maj. Abdul Aziz Sadoun, a police officer at the Baghdad police command. "They first attacked and destroyed the main power plant in the town, killing four people. Then they went to the brick factory and killed the people working there," slaying at least 21, Sadoun said. Other reports put the number of dead at 19.
Reuters news service quoted local police as saying that many of the victims died of a single gunshot wound to the forehead, adding that police were still searching fields around the factory for other victims.
"This was a sectarian attack," Nahrawan municipal council leader Alaa Abdul Sahab al-Lamy told Reuters.
There is an ongoing dispute about the numbers of Iraqis killed sectarian violence, with the administration and Pentagon intent upon making that number as small as possible. WaPo has reported the number as high as 1,300 as of last weekend, a tally "provided by a morgue worker, and an international human rights official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the source's job entailed close familiarity with the number of bodies the facility received."
The spectre of all-out civil war looms in Iraq, and the administration obviously doesn't want to recognize what they have wrought. At what point do you call it a civil war? At 500 deaths? 1,000?
Just as Bush ignored the warnings about the potential devastation of Katrina, he ignored the experts who warned in 2003 of the great potential for civil war in Iraq. And, as in the case of Katrina, the result has been tragic.
