I’ve been writing for more than two years on Iraq’s Shiite-led death squads (see “Phoenix Rising,” in The American Prospect). It’s been an open secret at least that long. Since that time, the number of Iraqis kidnapped, bound and gagged, and executed – or simply gunned down in the streets – by pro-government Shiite gangs is incalculable. But it is likely to be in the range of 25,000 in two years.

Ellen Knickmeyer, writing in the Washington Post, has been doggedly following the story lately, and her latest piece slams the Iraqi government and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which controls the Interior Ministry, for trying to suppress information about the number of dead. The piece notes this stunning fact: that Shiite death squads are killing more people than the insurgents. Here’s the relevant paragraph:

Execution-style killings of the kind frequently blamed on police or Shiite militias allied with the government appear to be killing more Iraqis than bombings of government and civilian targets by Sunni Arab insurgents.

She goes on to quote the cynical nonsense from a spokesman for the prime minister, who has the gall to blame “Baathists” for the killings, even though the overwhelming majority of those murdered are pro-insurgency Sunnis:

Abdul Razzaq Kadhumi, the prime minister's spokesman, declined Wednesday to give a breakdown of the figure of 379 execution-style killings given by Jafari. "These are obviously terrorist, Saddamist and Baathist acts against civilians, and they all go under victims of terrorism," he said.

The scale of the torture-murders is staggering. Here’s John Pace, the former UN human rights chief in Iraq, whose sober claims on this topic have been widely reported (but with little investigative followup):

"The Baghdad morgue received 1,100 bodies in July alone, about 900 of whom bore evidence of torture or summary execution. That continued throughout the year and last December there were 780 bodies, including 400 having gunshot wounds or wounds as those caused by electric drills."

Pace has charged that uncounted torture-murders and executions have been in the range of 500-1,000 a month for a long time. You can read about Pace here, and see the transcript of his interview on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.

The Bush administration seems incapable of understanding the need to engage with Iran, to seek their help in Iraq, and to search for an accommodation with the ayatollahs. Ironically, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad of the United States in Iraq has been given permission to talk to Iran about calming tensions in Iraq, but according to the latest statements from U.S. embassy he has not yet done so. According to a March 12 Reuters report:

The U.S. ambassador in Baghdad denied on Sunday seeking Iran's help to calm violence in Iraq and said there were still concerns about the Islamic Republic's links with militias in Iraq.

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said journalists in Tehran had been shown a letter by a senior Iranian intelligence agent that was purportedly from U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, and which invited Iran to send representatives to talks in Iraq.

The newspaper said the letter was written in Farsi, which the Afghan-born ambassador speaks.

Khalilzad told CNN there had been no meetings between Iranian and U.S. officials.

"We have concerns about their relations with militias and extremists," said Khalilzad.

Earlier, the U.S. embassy denied such a letter existed.

"Ambassador Khalilzad has the authority to meet with Iranian officials to discuss issues of mutual concern," the embassy said in a statement. "But he has not sent a letter in any language to the Iranians."

And, that, unfortunately, is the saddest commentary of all.

It might be too late, now that Iraq sectarian killings have surpassed the daily toll of the war between the United States and the resistance in Iraq. What they United States ought to have done two years ago -- namely, make a deal with the resistance and its core Baathist leadership -- might, after all, be happening. It's unclear how far up the food chain in the Bush administration this effort goes, but it appears that a desperate Ambassador Khalilzad has realized the importance of forging ties to the Baath party. Here's Time magazine's Michael Ware on the topic:

The ongoing dialogue between the U.S. and the Sunni insurgency is based on a shared wariness about the influence of Iran and its supporters in Iraq. U.S. officials are now saying bluntly that it's time to bring back the Baath Party, excluding only those that are guilty of specific crimes. That reflects a growing acceptance among U.S. officials that the military and bureaucratic know-how in the Sunni community is badly needed, even to help run the security forces that the U.S. is standing up.

Senior Baathist insurgent commanders are responding positively to the U.S. outreach on the political and military level. One senior commander I spoke to praised the U.S. for the release of some key Baathist officers who had been imprisoned, and later, when I asked a senior U.S. intelligence officer about the releases, he said the men had been freed as part of a calculated effort to demonstrate good faith in dealing with the insurgents. Of course, both sides share the objective of avoiding a civil war.

One senior Baathist talking about the Americans said to me, recently, "In the 1980s we were allies, how did we end up on opposite sides?" The Baathists are secular nationalists, they never allied with al-Qaeda or hardline Islamists when they were in power, and they've always been the sworn enemy of the soon-to-be-nuclear-armed regime in Iran. They share two of America's main enemies, al-Qaeda and Iran. The Baathists and al-Qaeda elements who have worked together in the insurgency have always been uncomfortable bedfellows. And they've left little doubt in each other's minds that once the Americans leave, they'll have to fight each other.

That's all good, but it is likely too late. My guess is, the Baathists will have to fight this war (against Iran, against Al Qaeda, to rein in the Kurds, etc.) on their own, once we leave. It is going to be bloody.

Sometimes it takes a small, personal atrocity to galvanize fence-sitters and other indecisive types to oppose a war like the one in Iraq. Initial reports about a possible U.S. atrocity in Iraq might do the trick. Here it is, from today's New York Times:

American military officials announced Tuesday that they were looking into an allegation that American soldiers intentionally killed 11 Iraqi civilians last week.

The inquiry, the second announced in a week, stems from an episode on Wednesday in Ishaqi, a Sunni Arab town north of Baghdad.

American officials initially said that American troops had been fired on from a farmhouse during a raid to capture an insurgent, and that they had returned fire, from the ground and the air, killing four people.

Iraqi police officials immediately rejected that account, saying 11 people had been killed after American soldiers lined up an entire family — from a 75-year-old grandmother to a 6-month-old baby — and shot them.

local police official, Farouq Hussein, told Reuters that all the victims had been shot in the head.

"It's a clear and perfect crime without any doubt," he said.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, an American military spokesman, said the military was investigating the episode. "This is not the way we operate," he said. "We take the allegation seriously, and we're working with the Iraqis to determine the facts."

The U.S. military is calling the atrocity story (see yesterday's entry) "misinformation" from the Iraqi police.

But at least one reporter, Michael Georgy of Reuters, went to the scene and found eyewitnesses charging that U.S. troops murdered a family of 11:

"We heard a barrage of shooting for 20 minutes and then we heard bombs," said Thiya Hussein, who said his cousin was killed. "After the Americans left we went to the house and found 11 people lying in blood together in one room. Five of them were children. They were bound in plastic handcuffs and shot."

"The baby, Husam, who was six-months-old, was shot dead. A 75-year-old woman was shot in the head," he told Reuters.

Another neighbor, Abbas Abid, said: "The house was damaged and the family was shot and lying in one room.

"Three cars were burned and four cows were shot also."

If you haven't read the whole text of the president's dialogue on Tuesday with Helen Thomas, it makes great reading. If only more members of the press corpse would interrupt the guy:

THE PRESIDENT: Helen. After that brilliant performance at the Grid Iron, I am -- (laughter.)

Q You're going to be sorry. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, then, let me take it back. (Laughter.)

Q I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?

THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise -- in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- is that -- I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect --

Q Everything --

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.

Q -- everything I've heard --

THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We -- when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that's why I went into Iraq -- hold on for a second --

Q They didn't do anything to you, or to our country.

THE PRESIDENT: Look -- excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained --

Q I'm talking about Iraq --

THE PRESIDENT: Helen, excuse me. That's where -- Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where they trained. That's where they plotted. That's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.

I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences --

Q -- go to war --

THE PRESIDENT: -- and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.

Q Thank you, sir. Secretary Rumsfeld -- (laughter.)

Q Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: You're welcome. (Laughter.) I didn't really regret it. I kind of semi-regretted it. (Laughter.)

Q -- have a debate.

THE PRESIDENT: That's right. Anyway, your performance at the Grid Iron was just brilliant -- unlike Holland's, was a little weak, but -- (laughter.)

Sorry

You have to love all the attention being paid to apostate neoconservative Francis Fukuyama. No doubt many neoconservatives, such as Richard Perle, are looking at the first four letters in Fukuyama’s name and thinking: “Exactly!”

So Mr. Fuku has a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal that rips to shreds the Bush administration’s obsession with what it calls democracy in the Middle East. It’s a piece that is full of all of the sorts of woolly-minded arguments that real conservatives make, but still, it has some good points.

Fuku wants to separate fighting Islamist terrorists from promoting democracy, and he notes that the war in Iraq has not exactly created a promised land that other inhabitants of the Middle East want to get to:

Many would-be opponents of regimes in places like Syria and Iran now say they’d prefer the status quo to the situation the Iraqis are in. …To put it mildly the Iraq war has not increased the prestige of the U.S. and American ideas like liberal democracy in the Middle East.

That intrepid defender of homeland security, Rep. Charles Schumer, has compared the owners of the Dubai port management company to skinheads. And his comments have riled up the Arab American Institute. This is from an AAI release:

Schumer, New York’s senior senator, was the first to criticize the DP World deal and has been its most vocal opponent. On March 20th, the New York Observer reported that when confronted by journalists who suggested that his opposition to the deal was a result of anti-Arab bias, Senator Schumer responded by saying:

“Let’s say skinheads had bought a company to take over our port,” he said. “I think the outcry would have been the same.”

Senator Schumer’s disgraceful comparison of Arab businessmen to skinheads is deplorable. As Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), a committee that provides support to Democratic Senators running for election, Schumer’s irresponsible statement is especially troubling.

“Senator Schumer’s brazen remark runs contrary to the Democratic Party’s principles of inclusion and diversity,” said AAI Executive Director Nidal Ibrahim. “The Senator owes Arab Americans an apology. Democrats need to recognize that Schumer may do more harm than good if he continues as Chairman of the DSCC.”

The Israeli elections are over, and what's interesting is how various observers are treating Ehud Olmert, the Kadima party leader and the heir to extreme right-wing General Ariel Sharon, as some sort of peacenik. Partly that's because Olmert has declared his intention to unilterally decide what Israel's borders will be, by withdrawing from whatever part of the West Bank he feels like, and annexing the rest.

You might think that this sort of preemptive peace would be viewed as outrageous, but not by all.

Today's Washington Post harrumphs that Olmert's unilateralism is not a bad idea:

In the absence of Palestinian movement, Mr. Olmert then will seek the support of the Bush administration for a unilateral withdrawal. As the new prime minister sees it, this could involve the removal of some 70,000 Jewish settlers from the West Bank, but also the de facto annexation of other large settlements to Israel, along with 10 percent of the West Bank's land. Such a large Israeli withdrawal would be a major practical step toward a Middle East settlement.

For a newspaper that strongly supported the war in Iraq like the Post, I suppose it isn't too surprising that they would see "de facto annexation" of Arab land as a "step toward a Middle East settlement."

The Times disagrees, saying in its editorial: "We're not happy with Mr. Olmert's proposal of a unilateral withdrawal." Still, the Times goes on say that it is "heartened" by even a unilateral withdrawal.

For a reality check, here's a Haaretz report on the Arab League summit's reaction to Olmert and Co.:

Arab leaders meeting in Sudan on Wednesday expressed dismay at the election victory of Kadima, after renewing their own offer of peace-for-land through international mediation.

Arab League chief Amr Moussa said, "It's not comprehensible ... accepting unilateral withdrawals according to Israeli whims. This will not work but will only lead to worsening matters.

"It is impossible to accept Israeli proposals that we have seen so far. Is there anything new the new Israeli government can come up with? Many Arabs don't think so," he added.