ABC News: “Every day, we find bodies in the river,” an official at the Swaira police force’s crime department told ABC News. “Most of them are of Iraqis living in the bloody areas to the south of Baghdad.”
—snip—
Most of the corpses are young people who have been shot and then hacked to pieces, according to the head of the Swaira police force, who asked that his name not be printed.
Tell me again, Condi, how much progress is being made in Iraq…
In Swaira alone, there have been over 330 bodies found floating in the Tigris since January 2005. Fishermen in Al Rashdia have stopped pulling corpses out of the water since there are so many bodies and to pull them all out would take all day:
Fisherman Mohammed Hussein told ABC News that he used to discover more than 10 bodies a day floating in the Tigris River where it flows by the Baghdad neighborhood of Al Rashdia.
“We used to fetch them out,” he said, “but now there are so many we leave them. Otherwise, there would be no time for fishing.”
Five more bodies were found “bobbing in the Tigris River near Baghdad earlier today, 2 of which were beheaded:
More than 50 bodies were found in Baghdad on Saturday and the following day five more bobbed up in the Tigris river south of the capital; two of them skeletal remains, three of them recently beheaded.
Excuse me, but what the fuck???
This doesn’t even consider the 35 “other” corpses that were found in Baghdad over a 24 hour period this week (all with signs of torture and bullet holes), the 91 “other” bodies found around Baghdad just the other day. But in those 91 bodies, there were two more floating in the Tigris River near Karrada.
These reports are a far too common occurrence. Just last month, we had this report:
Seven mutilated bodies were fished out of the Tigris river in the town of Suwayrah, at a spot southeast of the war-torn capital where murder victims wash up on a daily basis.
From less than three weeks ago:
Police said that nine corpses were pulled out of the Tigris river and turned in to the mortuary in Kut, 160km southeast of Baghdad. They had been blindfolded, had their hands and legs tied, and showed signs of torture.
—snip—
Later, five beheaded corpses which were found on the banks of the Tigris in al-Suwayra, 40km south of Baghdad, were brought to the mortuary.
This is NOT progress. This is NOT “freedomTM on the march”. This is NOT the “birth pangs of democracy”.
This is torture.
This is murder.
This is civil war.
This is what happens when there is no “course” in the first place, let alone to “stay”. This is terrorism, created by an illegal invasion, an immoral occupation, lies, greed and torture.
“It’s what many families do when they are looking for missing relatives,” he (Imad Abdullah, who had his brother and cousin killed) said. “Terrorists dump the bodies in the river to terrify those who live and work along its banks.”
And it is working – just witness what happened to a water filtering plant near Baghdad:
At one point, work was disrupted at a nearby water filtering plant that provides Baghdad with drinking water when two corpses became stuck in the main pipeline.
“It was the most horrifying sight I had seen in my whole life,” said Kareem Ali, an employee at the plant. “Flesh and blood mixed with water. I have [seen] dead animals before, but it was the first time I had seen human remains. It was horrible.”
This is no way for Iraqis to live. Yet, there is nobody that can come up with a way for their lives to get any better, anytime soon.
This is no place that our troops should be. But don’t ask me, hear it from them. This is, according to one of our Marines, is Dante’s Inferno. And, as even Senator John Warner knows and is almost ready to admit, it is time to bring our troops home.