US forces kill 18 Iraqis in Baghdad,

[chaz4jazz]

Medics Say:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 18 Iraqis were killed on Sunday after U.S. troops clashed with a Shi'ite militia, medics and police said.

Police said the clashes erupted after the Mehdi Army militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr tried to stop U.S. troops from entering a mosque.

A medic said 18 bodies were found around the mosque.

A senior aide to Sadr accused U.S. troops of killing more than 20 unarmed worshippers during evening prayers at a Sadr mosque in east Baghdad.

U.S. spokesmen had no immediate comment.

Police and residents said there were clashes involving Sadr's Mehdi Army militia fighters after U.S. troops raided the mosque in east Baghdad. Police said the troops appeared to be trying to arrest someone.

Sadr aide Hazim al-Araji told Reuters the dead were not militiamen and had been unarmed: "The American forces went into Mustafa mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers ... They tied them up and shot them."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060326/ts_nm/iraq_clashes_dc

[LynnTheDem]

1. US troops killing SHIA.

The irony. The MFing irony.

[grytpype]

5. This is just great: a three-way civil war

with the US as the "Visiting Team"

[High Plains]

2. Smart move. Piss off Sadr and the Mahdi army.

[5X]

3. Combine this with Rice's comments on MTP....

and we have added lots of spice to this
pot of war we are stirring.

[DoYouEverWonder]

16. WTF did Condi say this morning?

I missed it.

[5X]

17. She pretty much said we are at war with the middle east.

Canofun has clips of the pertinent parts.

[silverchair]

4. and here is one of the jackasses responsible

look at the a-hole

?x=180&y=239&sig=5If993MgU8s6HkHpAZVYqw--

[LynnTheDem]

6. as he is the COMMANDER IN CHIEF, as he constantly tells us,

then HE is THE jackass responsible.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. Smooth move.

[maddezmom]

8. this sounds like it's going to be very ugly...Fox reporting up to 30

Watching fox now and they can't even spin it into "good news".

[malaise]

9. US attack Baghdad mosque -18 dead

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4847638.stm

In Baghdad, an aide to Mr Sadr accused the US of killing unarmed people at the mosque.

"The American forces went into Mustafa mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers," Hazim al-Araji told Reuters news agency, citing a larger death toll than the 18 counted by medical sources.

AFP news agency said residents close to the scene reported hearing gunfire and ambulances, while black-clad members of Mr Sadr's Mehdi Army could be seen in the streets.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[xchrom]

11. tell moqtada that we're not killing them --

we're LIBERATING them! permanently.

[Judi Lynn]

21. How lucky can they get? Bush is looking out for them.

Why won't the media tell any of the good stories about Iraq?

[xchrom]

23. i know huh?!? where are the good stories?!?!

[coalition_unwilling]

33. We're "liberating" them in the Sartrean sense (of total liberation

by death)

[cornermouse]

12. See Chapter 1, page 13, third paragraph in

How to Make Friends and Increase the Earnings of Your Family's Favorite Corporations
By George W. Bush

[Viva_La_Revolution]

13. Riverbend on the 18th -

It has been three years since the beginning of the war that marked the end of Iraq’s independence. Three years of occupation and bloodshed.

Spring should be about renewal and rebirth. For Iraqis, spring has been about reliving painful memories and preparing for future disasters. In many ways, this year is like 2003 prior to the war when we were stocking up on fuel, water, food and first aid supplies and medications. We're doing it again this year but now we don't discuss what we're stocking up for. Bombs and B-52's are so much easier to face than other possibilities.

I don’t think anyone imagined three years ago that things could be quite this bad today. The last few weeks have been ridden with tension. I’m so tired of it all- we’re all tired.

Three years and the electricity is worse than ever. The security situation has gone from bad to worse. The country feels like it’s on the brink of chaos once more- but a pre-planned, pre-fabricated chaos being led by religious militias and zealots.
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

:(

[malaise]

14. But slaughtering citizens of a country in a mosque

has got to be a new low. This is fucking madness.
By the way the US army also arrested several persosn from the Interior Ministry today. Sovereignty has taken on a strange new meaning.

Edit-sp.

[IndianaGreen]

20. The only way to have a unity government is by denying the Shias power

that they gained at the ballot box. A nice pragmatic solution would have been to put Allawi in charge, a secular Shia, but we have gone too far down the road of supporting elections to now turn around and say that election results don't matter.

[daleo]

15. It sounds like the American Iraqi hunt started today too.

Just kidding, every day is Iraqi hunt day for Bush and his supporters.

[norml]

18. Amid confusion, Iraq Shi'ites accuse U.S. troops (Reuters)

Amid confusion, Iraq Shi'ites accuse U.S. troops

Mon Mar 27, 2006 4:23 AM IST

By Michael Georgy and Alastair Macdonald


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Politicians from Iraq's Shi'ite majority accused U.S. troops of massacring 20 worshippers at a Baghdad mosque on Sunday but police and residents said many died in clashes between Shi'ite militia fighters and Americans.

U.S. military spokesmen declined comment on the accusations but issued a statement describing a raid by Iraqi special forces, with U.S. advisers, on a building that was not a mosque in roughly the same area. It said 16 insurgents were killed.

Police said U.S. forces clashed with the Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, killing 20 fighters.

With Baghdad under night curfew it was impossible to pin down what happened. But unusually strident anti-U.S. coverage on government-run state television showed a fierce confrontation between the ruling Shi'ite Islamists and the U.S. administration.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said the premier was "deeply concerned" and had called the U.S. commander in Iraq, General George Casey, who said there would be a full inquiry.

Also on Sunday, U.S. forces arrested 41 officials from the Shi'ite-controlled Interior Ministry and freed 17 foreigners from a secret jail, government, political and U.S. sources said.

Northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi troops found 30 bodies, many of them beheaded, on a village street. And in the same area around Baquba, police arrested one of their own majors, the brother of the regional police chief, over Shi'ite death squad killings.


snip


http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-03-27T041919Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-242299-2.xml

[IndianaGreen]

19. bloodied corpses w/ identification tags that read "Dawa Islamic Party,"

Iraqi television showed a room containing bloodied corpses wearing identification tags that read "Dawa Islamic Party," the Shiite party of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/03/26/iraq.main/index.html

The Dawa party has always been a terrorist organization, and the Sadr militia is suspected of death squad activities. Having said that, it is now too late to switch sides in the Iraq civil war. The last thing we need is to get a Shia insurgency going!

Let's bring the troops home now!

[tinymontgomery]

22. This needs to be reported

in the good new's light that the administration wants ie:
"US Forces didn't kill 8 million Iraqies today". See would that be a better headline

:sarcasm:

[norml]

24. Followers of rebel cleric claim U.S. military killed 17 in mosque raid

Posted on Sun, Mar. 26, 2006

Followers of rebel cleric claim U.S. military killed 17 in mosque raid

By Nancy A. Youssef
Knight Ridder Newspapers


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Supporters of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr said U.S forces killed at least 17 people loyal to Sadr during an apparent raid on a mosque Sunday, but U.S. officials denied they entered or attacked any mosques in Iraq.

Instead, U.S. officials said they conducted a raid around 4 a.m. in a building in a nearby community, killing 16 suspected insurgents who fired on them. In a statement, the U.S. military said they conducted the raid in the northeastern Baghdad neighborhood of Adamiyah to "disrupt a terrorist cell responsible for conducting attacks on Iraqi security and Coalition Forces and kidnapping Iraqi civilians in the local area."

U.S. officials said they freed a non-Western hostage and found a cache of weapons.

Sadr's supporters and a man who said he was an eyewitness said the attack happened three miles away, near the Baghdad slum of Sadr City 14 hours later. They said about a dozen Humvees, accompanied by helicopters, descended on the al Mustafa mosque, where some were praying.

The U.S. military said in a statement that, "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation," which officials said was directed at a terrorist-controlled building.

U.S. officials said in a statement that the 1st Iraqi Special Operations Forces Brigade led the attack and that U.S. Special Forces "were on scene in an advisory capacity only."


snip


http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14193431.htm

[Terran1212]

25. They attack a mosque?!

What the hell are they thinking?

[The_Casual_Observer]

26. "U.S. spokesmen had no immediate comment."

Not if they can help it.

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RedEarth]

28. Shiite Fighters Clash With G.I.'s and Iraqi Forces

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 27 -- American and Iraqi government forces clashed with Shiite militiamen in Baghdad on Sunday night in the most serious confrontation in months, and Iraqi security officials said 17 people had been killed in a mosque, including its 80-year-old imam.

This morning, at least 40 Iraqis were killed and 20 were wounded when a car bomb exploded at a police recruiting station between the cities of Tal Afar and Mosul in the country’s north, and the bodies of 27 men who had been executed were found in Baghdad and its suburbs, according to Iraqi and American officials.

Those killings came on top of the discovery of 10 bodies in Baghdad on Sunday and a report that 30 men had been beheaded near Baquba. But the shootout with the Shiite militiamen who have come to control much of the capital raised tensions in a way that the steady stream of bombings and executions did not. The governor for Baghdad's provincial government, Hussein Al-Tahan, told Reuters today that he was suspending all cooperation with American forces until the incident was investigated.

The American military, clearly worried about exacerbating a combustible situation that many Iraqis are already describing as civil war, denied that American forces had entered the mosque. But it said in a statement that 16 insurgents had been killed and 15 captured in a nearby combat operation against a terrorist cell.

The differing versions of what happened seemed to raise a broader question about who is in control of Iraq's security at a time when Iraqi politicians still have not formed a unified government, sectarian tensions are higher than ever and mutilated bodies keep surfacing on the streets. American officials are now saying that Shiite militias are the No. 1 problem in Iraq, more dangerous than the Sunni-led insurgents who for nearly the past three years have been branded the gravest security threat.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/international/27cnd-iraq.html?ei=5094&en=49997229b254a332&hp=&ex=1143522000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

[PurityOfEssence]

29. If Chaing and Mao could bury the hatchet to get rid of the Japanese...

Perhaps the various locals could do the same to us.

It doesn't seem so, though; it looks like they're going to be far too busy killing each other and trying to take over to have much time to kill Americans.

What a mess.

Sorry, world; we suck.

[coalition_unwilling]

34. If the U.S. hadn't abetted Saddam's decimation of

the indigenous left wing in Iraqi politics, perhaps the Iraqi Communist Party could lead a United Front against us. I keep waiting for something like your scenario to happen, a National Liberation Front of indigenous resistance across sectarian lines.

[saigon68]

30. KICK

[cantstandbush]

31. So what are we saying when we say US forces kill 18 Iraqis in Iraq?

If they kill anyone, it is likely to be Iraqis.

[coalition_unwilling]

32. Support our Oops! (n/t)