NEWS: More Deaths in Iraq: Worshippers Burned Alive

POLITICS: More Deaths in Iraq: Worshippers Burned Alive

October was recently revealed to be the worst month in civilian deaths in Iraq, with over 3700 civilians deaths at the hands of insurgent and terrorist attacks throughout the country. Yesterday saw the instatement of a curfew in Baghdad after a coordinated car bomb attack killed over 160 people. Today, despite that curfew Shiite extremists set a new low and found six Sunni Muslims leaving Friday prayer and doused them with kerosene, burning them alive.

The death total for today is only half what it was yesterday, but still almost 90 people dead in retaliation for the last wave of attacks. It's difficult to comprehend the horror of people being burned alive strictly for their religion. But it's happening right now in Iraq, in addition to the destruction of churches and cars elsewhere in Baghdad by enraged Shiites. And where does the blame end up? You guessed it - the occupying US forces.

Withdrawing US troops from Iraq will not magically solve this problem. Nor will it necessarily get better right away. But the US troops who nobody in Iraq wants to be there will continue to be a convenient scapegoat for those who perpetuate this cycle of violence. Removing US troops will at least force those who are still in Iraq to acknowledge that it is hatreds between the people who are there right now that are responsible for unspeakable acts like these. Granted, none of this likely would have happened had the US decided not to invade, but that's a mess that has already been made. The best thing to do now is to help clean it up, and that will only happen when the Iraq is a truly self-governing and policing entity.

Stay the course! Or something. Sigh.

stay the course and kill all those mother fuckers kill em all and let your gods sort em out.

What do you mean scapegoat, you're making it sound like they're not actually responsible for creating the conditions for this to happen.

god, I feel so ashamed to be American

again, I say, fuck you George W.

Well we created a three way civil war situation, I think it's time to ring the bell and let themsort outtheir own destinies. Wecan probably look forward to another 50 years of this sort of thing due to arbitrary lines being drawn by former colonial powers. Thats not a dig I mean whats past is past, but damn this is going to keep going on forever.

there has always been civil war between the sunni and shiite, we didnt create teh hatred they had for each other, we just gave them a reason to blame us. and for most of the people in iraq ... well .... they want us here because they see what we are doing. the "politicians" or media dont see the real truth behind all the work we as soldiers do.

I hope you didn't mean that!!

Either way, your comment made me think of an incident from European History: the persecution of the heretical Cathar sect by the Church.

During the persecution of the Cathar town of Beziers in 1209, the soldiers were under the command of Abbot Amaud-Amaury. When the Abbot was asked how one could tell the true believers from the heretics, he is reputed to have replied, "Kill them all and God will recognize his own".

Sigh... that makes me slightly ill.

Ethnic and Sectarian conflict reemerged heavily when the British occupied Iraq and divided the people so they could easily rule. Now that we took over we encouraged the same schism. By de-Baathification and showing favoritism I started to see Iraqis start accepting their status as Sunni or Shia. Before most lines were drawn tribally and many Iraqis married across religious differences. I have three Iraqi friends who's parents are Shia one and Sunni the other.

Cleaning up is complicated, but the US does unbalance the situation and every thing we do becomes tainted and unwanted. We roll into an orphanage to give toys to kids and insurgents will kill the children. Our ability to help has deteriorated. The largest motivation for people to join extremist insurgent groups is because of the occupation itself. Removing that factor from the equation is a vital step.

The international community needs to come in on this. For now they stand back with the "you broke it, you buy it" mentality. We have a president that won't ask for help and won't accept help, probably so his croonies can still profit off of the war, so we are stuck.

Either way, the volunteer military is broken, we are breaking our economy, and we lost the ability to be recognized peace keepers.

Bring them home now

The longer this operation goes on, the more it becomes clear that we need to cut our loses and bow out of this mission. Have our military and political leaders learned nothing from the Vietnam War?

No.

Man, fuck religion.

Yes, they have. See?

Fuck yeah, dude. Rock on. How badass are you?



*sigh*

Military leaders don't make foreign policy, political leaders do. Not saying that they don't share some blame, but we know who's really got the most blood of their hands. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush. And I think all they're thinking about is how history is going to look at this whole fucking mess. If Bush brought the troops home now, he thinks history would look at him as a failure. He's just trying to ride out his last two years and pass the buck to the next President, whoever that may be.

It's a fucking sad truth, that many more Iraqis, Americans and others who are stuck there will die so that Bush can save some face in the history books.

Yes, I can see it now... Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Bush.

war is a racket, this one is a prime example. Look at who is making billions of dollars. Give weapons away to warring parties and send the bill to the American taxpayer. Does it get any better than that? How about a regional weapons boycott to the whole area? of course the Halliburton types don't want that.

That said, the sectarian violence is indefensiible as well...