Figueres Don't Lie, but Liars Figure
What Defines a Killing as Sectarian? U.S. Military Teams Analyze and Tally Each Civilian Death
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, September 25, 2007; A01
On Sept. 1, the bullet-riddled bodies of four Iraqi men were found on a Baghdad street. Two days later, a single dead man, with one bullet in his head, was found on a different street. According to the U.S. military in Iraq, the solitary man was a victim of sectarian violence. The first four were not.
. . . "If you were just a criminal and you just wanted to take somebody's money, just wanted to discipline them, you're not going to take the time to bind them up, burn their bodies, cut their arms off, cut their head off," he explained. "You're just going to shoot them in the body and get it over with." That, the team judged, is what happened to the four Shiite men, sprayed with gunfire and left where they dropped. . . --more-- ____________________________________________________________ In the modern equivalent of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, our military is cooking the books in order to get the numbers to run uphill. Technicians changed the direction of the Chicago River for navigational and health purposes, but they never fooled themselves that it willingly ran counter to nature's law. When the truth is too outrageous to tell, we have allowed our government and military to soothe us with fairy tales before bed. But whatever the story, it's still nighttime.
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