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.

Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left Friday prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking the Iraqi capital a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed 215 people in Baghdad's main Shiite district.

Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in Friday's assault by suspected members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed at least 19 other Sunnis, including women and children, in the same neighborhood, the volatile Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.
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.

Politicians loyal to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatened to boycott parliament and the Cabinet if al-Maliki went ahead with the meeting. The political bloc, known as Sadrists, is a mainstay of support for al-Maliki. The Mahdi Army is the organization's armed wing.

Sadrist lawmaker Qusai Abdul-Wahab blamed U.S. forces for Thursday's attack in Sadr City because they failed to provide security.

"We say occupation forces are fully responsible for these acts, and we call for the withdrawal of occupation forces or setting a timetable for their withdrawal," Abdul-Wahab said.
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.

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