Wednesday, January 30, 2008

NYT sees no violence

Civilians stumbled upon nine headless bodies in a field about 60 miles north of Baghdad on Tuesday.
The nine, including three women, had been targeted because they were suspected of being part of a local awakening council, or concerned local citizens group, that was working with U.S. troops to fight al Qaida in Iraq, said a police officer involved in the investigation.
The officer said the nine headless bodies were found with two DVDs showing one of the dead men confessing that he was a member of an awakening council and another man refusing to confess.

The above is from Leila Fadel and Hassan al Jubouri's "Headless bodies found in Iraq" (McClatchy Newspapers) while in the Los Angeles Times, Julian E. Barnes offers "U.S. troops allegedly killed detainees:"


The detainees allegedly were killed at the point of capture and never taken to a U.S. or Iraqi base for questioning, said Paul Boyce, a U.S. Army spokesman. The military did not reveal how many soldiers may have been involved, how many detainees may have died or who made the allegations. Frequently, such allegations surface months after an incident, when soldiers come forward or talk among themselves. Soldiers from at least one company of the 2nd Brigade were questioned by investigators last week in Germany. The inquiry is being led by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command.

Barnes notes the violence in Mosul yesterday. In addition, Reuters reports:

A cameraman working for an Iraqi Shi'ite satellite television channel and his driver were killed by a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad on Tuesday, an official from the channel said.
Aala Abdul-Kareem, a cameraman with al-Furat channel, run by the powerful Shi'ite party the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council headed by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, died after the attack near the town of Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad.
Abdul-Kareem, 29, who was married with two children, is the first journalist to be killed this year in Iraq, which is the most dangerous place in the world for journalists according to media watchdog groups.

Martha notes Amit R. Paley's "U.S. to Expand Outposts Across Baghdad by 30%" (Washington Post):

During a luncheon with reporters in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Maj. Gen. Jeffery W. Hammond said he would increase the number of garrisons in the city from 75 to 99 by June to "push ourselves into locations where maybe in the past we didn't go before."
"I don't want there to be anyplace in Baghdad where al-Qaeda or anyone else can start to take hold because we've ignored that particular" area, he said, referring to the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. He called the improved security conditions in Baghdad "remarkable."
In northern Iraq, meanwhile, the remains of 19 people -- 10 heads and nine intact corpses -- were discovered in the town of Muqdadiyah in Diyala province, northeast of the capital, police said. Elsewhere, officials said a suicide car bomber in the northern city of Mosul injured at least 15 people.

So that's how some outlets go. The New York Times goes another way . . . ignoring the events in Iraq yesterday completely. (James Glanz' article is not about the events in Iraq yesterday -- it will be highlighted in the next entry.) The 'Awakening' Council continues to be targeted, a reporter dies, an investigation is launched into the deaths of prisoners and more "garrisons" in the latest version of Baghdad crackdown. None of it qualifies for a story in the Times. By the way, 3941 is now ICCC's total for the number of US service members who have died in the illegal war since it started in March 2003 and 37 is the total for the month thus far.

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