Kidnapping countermeasures taken by Iraqi employees were among the chilling details in the US Iraq embassy memo to Condoleezza Rice. “Planning for their own possible abduction,” the memo says, employees “use code names for friends and colleagues and contacts entered into Iraq cell phones.” Today’s news that dozens of Iraqi government employees were kidnapped while leaving their jobs at an industrial facility near Baghdad highlights the nightmare.
Although early reports put the number of victims at 85, Agence France Presse is reporting that “[m]ore than 100 employees of Iraq’s Ministry of Industry were kidnapped by gunmen north of Baghdad as they left work on Wednesday in a brazen reminder of the country’s dire security situation.” AFP says the mass kidnapping was carried out by “at least 50 gunmen who had arrived in five minibuses.”
Think about that. 50 armed men driving around near Baghdad — and near a major US military base — and kidnapping more than 100 people unimpeded by security forces, ours or theirs, at the same time as some 75,000 Iraqi army and police troops, along with US forces, are conducting an enormous counter-insurgency operation in and around the city.
Operation Forward Together was among the good news touted by the Bush administration following the president’s return from a touch-and-go visit to Baghdad last week. As with previous such operations, the daily violence was fractionally staunched at the onset and has been gradually returning to “normal” levels since.
Meanwhile, another of Saddam Hussein’s defense attorneys has been murdered, the third since the trial began. Justice ministry officials said the murder wouldn’t affect the trial and admonished the remaining attorneys to focus on their work.
There is literally no way of knowing how many Iraqis have been killed outright or have died from lack of medical care and infrastructure since the US invaded the country, but the number has to be approaching Saddam-like numbers by now and we’re nowhere near done destroying the country. Heck of a job.
More than 100 Iraqis kidnapped from Baghdad plant
Kidnapping countermeasures taken by Iraqi employees were among the chilling details in the US Iraq embassy memo to Condoleezza Rice. “Planning for their own possible abduction,” the memo says, employees “use code names for friends and colleagues and contacts entered into Iraq cell phones.” Today’s news that dozens of Iraqi government employees were kidnapped while leaving their jobs at an industrial facility near Baghdad highlights the nightmare.
Although early reports put the number of victims at 85, Agence France Presse is reporting that “[m]ore than 100 employees of Iraq’s Ministry of Industry were kidnapped by gunmen north of Baghdad as they left work on Wednesday in a brazen reminder of the country’s dire security situation.” AFP says the mass kidnapping was carried out by “at least 50 gunmen who had arrived in five minibuses.”
Think about that. 50 armed men driving around near Baghdad — and near a major US military base — and kidnapping more than 100 people unimpeded by security forces, ours or theirs, at the same time as some 75,000 Iraqi army and police troops, along with US forces, are conducting an enormous counter-insurgency operation in and around the city.
Operation Forward Together was among the good news touted by the Bush administration following the president’s return from a touch-and-go visit to Baghdad last week. As with previous such operations, the daily violence was fractionally staunched at the onset and has been gradually returning to “normal” levels since.
Meanwhile, another of Saddam Hussein’s defense attorneys has been murdered, the third since the trial began. Justice ministry officials said the murder wouldn’t affect the trial and admonished the remaining attorneys to focus on their work.
There is literally no way of knowing how many Iraqis have been killed outright or have died from lack of medical care and infrastructure since the US invaded the country, but the number has to be approaching Saddam-like numbers by now and we’re nowhere near done destroying the country. Heck of a job.