Of course, freedom can be messy:
Gunmen attacked women picking vegetables in a field outside the Iraqi capital, killing six adults and two young girls and kidnapping two teenagers.
Police said they suspected the gunmen in yesterday’s attack were Sunnis seeking to intimidate Shiites into fleeing the area south of Baghdad. Previous major attacks in Iraq have killed many women and men together, and at times individual women have been shot or kidnapped but rarely have large groups of women been attacked.
In another sign of sectarian bloodshed, police in Duluiyah north of Baghdad found 14 beheaded bodies thought to be from a group of 17 workers kidnapped by gunmen on Thursday while travelling home to the mostly Shiite town of Balad. […]
In separate incidents, at least 10 other Iraqi civilians died in violence yesterday, and a US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in northern Iraq, the 45th American death this month.
Bloodshed in Baghdad itself was kept down by a curfew – imposed every Friday, banning vehicle traffic to prevent car bomb attacks on weekly Muslim prayers.
The northern city of Mosul was also under curfew after US and Iraqi troops fought with gunmen on Thursday night. The fight was sparked by a mortar barrage on a US base that wounded 12 American soldiers. At least 12 suspected insurgents were reported killed in ensuing gun battles.
But never fear. Our President is on the job. He promises to do whatever it takes to make things right:
(cont.)
GEORGE W. BUSH: If the plan is now not working, the plan that’s in place isn’t working, America needs to adjust, I completely agree.
As for that John Hopkins’ study in Lancet that estimates 655,000 deaths as a result of the Iraq war and occupation, never fear. People in the know tell us it simply isn’t credible:
GEORGE W. BUSH: No I don’t consider it a credible report, neither does General Casey and neither do Iraqi officials.
[…]GEORGE CASEY: That 650,000 number seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I have not seen a number higher than 50,000, and so I don’t give that much credibility at all.
Who should you trust, after all? A bunch of American econometricians and epidemiologists, and Iraqi doctors, or your President and the General he appointed to lead our troops in Iraq? I think we all know the answer to that.
Meanwhile, some liberal bastard has gone and leaked the Baker commission report on Iraq to the traitorous New York Sun:
WASHINGTON — A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.
Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, “Stability First” and “Redeploy and Contain,” both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.
When can we start lining up newspaper reporters and editors against the wall and shoot them so patriotic Americans don’t have to suffer from their outrageous fact-based reports? I’m sure for our Leader’s sake, it can’t be soon enough.
And finally, can we all get off Donald Rumsfeld’s case? The poor man has suffered enough.
KIM LANDERS: With the Iraq War far from over, it’s perhaps no surprise Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a little prickly when asked if he takes responsibility for what’s gone wrong.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Why do we have to keep going through this? Of course I bear responsibility, my Lord, I’m Secretary of Defence. Write it down. Quote it. You can bank it.
There. Satisfied Liberals? What more can he do and what more do you want? He accepts responsibility for Iraq. Now leave the poor man in peace so he can continue his hard work in the service of the greatest President to ever hold that office in the 21st Century.
John Hopkins’ Study on Iraqi Mortality
