The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has lost control of portions of his Mahdi Army militia that are splintering off into freelance death squads and criminal gangs, a senior coalition intelligence official said Wednesday.
A quarter of a million Iraqis have fled their homes and registered as refugees in the past seven months, data released on Thursday showed, amid an upsurge in violence that has accompanied the Ramadan holy month.
A dramatic home video obtained by ABC News shows U.S. troops apparently abandoned a truck convoy after it came under insurgent attack in Iraq last year.
Three unarmed Halliburton truck drivers were executed at point-blank range once the troops left, according to a surviving driver, Preston Wheeler, of Mena, Ark., who taped the scene. “They was murdered. To me, they was murdered,” Wheeler told ABC News in an exclusive interview broadcast Wednesday on World News and Nightline.
The tape shows an armored personnel carrier leading the trucks that Wheeler says was from the Virginia National Guard. Once insurgents opened fire and disabled four trucks, the personnel carrier can be seen racing ahead.
“They left. They, I don’t know where they went, they’re nowhere to be seen,” Wheeler said. Wheeler says it was 45 minutes before a U.S. military force returned.
By then, Wheeler says, he had seen two drivers shot at point-blank range. He identified them as Keven Dagit, of Jefferson, Iowa, and Sascha Greener-Case, of Sierra Vista, Ariz.
This is demonstrably false. Bill Clinton killed everyobne in Mena, Ark using a sharpened spoon.
http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2006_09_24_patriotboy_archive.html#115930761577405568
I’m just curious. Given that the netroots disappear instantly if the authorities kill the electricity, how are all of us going to communicate with each other, ESPECIALLY if people are already reluctant to use their real names? I wonder why we do this. The bad guys already know who we are (IP addresses, etc.), but if I wanted to share critical intelligence with other cut-off bloggers, how the hell would I start?
I think we all need to go public, frankly. I know it’s hard for some to face — job pressures and so on — but if we can’t hold a job AND have free speech, aren’t we already in a dictatorship???
My name is John H. Farr, and I approve of this message.
To state the obvious: Let us look at the situation.
The NEI (a collection of intelligence agencies) is wrong. Before it was released, the buzz was that such documents are worded as finely nuanced and easy to take out of context. The sentences were about as nuanced as “See Spot Run.”
The death squads are getting so much power that they’re even too radical for the radicals to control.
The military doesn’t even defend its own convoys and apparently runs away; I bet this is really gonna put the fear of [the Bush] God into the insurgents.
I can’t tell you how much better I feel knowing that Bush knows the real truth.
I felt pretty good about the killings until I saw it was three unarmed Halliburton drivers; I initially thought it said three unarmed Halliburton executives. Oh well, one of these days.
Aaaargh, waiting impatiently for the Bullshit Administration to get the Mussolini Pinata treatment
And speaking of fleeing, the last entry in Riverbend’s blog was about exactly that, and she hasn’t updated in 7 weeks. Anyone know if she’s OK?
—-Aaaargh