The news sounded ominous, with reporter Joshua Partlow
openly questioning the success of the current surge strategy, stating
as fact that June civilian deaths in Baghdad were much higher in
comparison to January. It seems far more likely that Partlow was, at best, a bit too credulous. |
| “ | Civilian deaths in Iraq have been a contentious point since Day One of
Operation Iraqi Freedom. Anti-war activists and opposition politicians
often cite estimates of 100,000 civilian deaths said to have resulted
from the invasion and the subsequent violence. A recent United Nations
report calculated that 6,000 civilians died in the violence in May and
June alone. The morgue is at the heart of that debate, because
whoever controls the morgue controls the numbers. That person is
radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
One day last week, a NEWSWEEK reporter saw more than a dozen
militiamen, dressed in the traditional black of Sadr’s army, patrolling
the facilities, keeping an eye on the staff. According to morgue
employees, Sadr’s Mahdi militiamen aim to control the flow of
information to give Sadr a leg up in the propaganda war. Ministry of
Health officials release statistics from time to time. Last week, a
ministry official told NEWSWEEK that the last few weeks have seen a 30
percent rise in victims, many of them found in the garbage or floating
down the Tigris—but they rarely reveal details about the nature of the
deaths, or the identities of the corpses. Sadr’s political wing also controls the Health Ministry, and he has good reason to keep such details hidden: they could incriminate Shiite militias.
| ” |
Oh, there's more.
|
|
