In a CNN interview reported by the Los Angeles Times, Iraq interim president Ghazi Ajil Yawer said that Iraqis view U.S. air strikes on residential areas as collective punishment, likening their situation to that of Palestinians in Gaza. Ajil Yawer said video of civilian victims of the air strikes, including women and children, “brings to mind Gaza.”

That’s a harsh statement, given the loathing many Arabs feel toward Israel and its tactics in Gaza.

Ajil Yawer’s power as president is extremely limited, and he has not been a highly visible member of the interim government (Baghdad blogger Riverbend recently issued an APB for him). He was among the most vocal members of the former Iraqi Governing Council in speaking out against the inconclusive U.S. seige of Falluja in April of this year, in which hundreds of civilians were killed.

Middle East expert Juan Cole speculates that Ajil Yawer’s comments may represent the beginning of an attempt to head off assaults on Falluja, Sadr City and other insurgent havens after the U.S. elections.

Ajil Yawer’s reference to collective punishment, which is illegal under international law, is almost certain to provoke a strong response from U.S. officials and opinion manufacturers. His position would seem to insulate him from the usual dismissive attitude toward anyone failing to echo the “power of positive thinking” policy the White House has adopted, and his remarks follow close on the heels of a Knight Ridder report citing Iraq health ministry officials as saying that U.S. and Iraqi military attacks have killed many more civilians than have insurgents or terrorists in the months since April, when collection of the statistics began.

Health ministry officials have been ordered not to release any additional statistics to journalists, and the U.S. continues to insist that, video footage and hospital reports to the contrary, its air strikes kill only insurgents or terrorists.

Wire services and other sources report that more than fifty people were killed overnight in bombings, shootings and clashes between insurgents and U.S. forces, including, according to doctors in Falluja, two children and their parents killed in a U.S. air strike.

In the U.S., neoconservative polemicist and former human Christopher Hitchens responded to the mayhem in Iraq by castigating Teresa Heinz-Kerry for speculating that the Bush administration might have an “October surprise” up its collective sleeve.

76 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq this month, the most in any of the three months since the dissolution of the occupying administion on June 28, raising the number of U.S. soldiers killed since that date to more than 230. 257 U.S. soldiers died during the three months prior to the June 28 ceremony, more than half of them—135—in Aprill.

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