Liberated Iraqi citizens are taking matters into their own hands and have begun assassinating former ruling Baath Party officials, reports the Washington Post.
The killings of mid-level government functionaries and Baathist icons, according to the Post, appear to have increased following the U.S. decree last Friday that prohibits senior party officials from holding positions in the top three tiers of Iraq’s postwar government.
In one example, the singer Daoud Qais, known for his odes to Hussein, was shot dead on Saturday along with the president of the Iraqi Artists Union.
Ironically, a senior U.S. official described the decree as intended to “drive a stake through [the Baath Party’s] heart.” Iraqis, who feel the coalition isn’t doing enough to punish their tormenters of three decades, appear to be taking the order literally and are using lists looted from Iraq’s bombed-out government buildings to pick their targets.
“We want the Americans to kill them, but we don’t think they are going to,” the Post quotes Muntathar Mohammed, a 40-year-old unemployed Sadr City resident, as saying. “Why can Americans kill anyone they want? Why can’t we? I will kill Baathists myself. This is my right.”
Citing anecdotal evidence provided by former exile groups and Iraqis familiar with some of the killings, the Post estimates the number killed could reach several hundred in Baghdad alone.
Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, an exile-led opposition group, said he had heard hundreds of former party officials have been killed in Sadr City since the end of the war.
According to the Post, the Mohsin Mosque is the focal point for Sadr City’s Jamila district. The mosque was closed by Saddam Hussein four years ago and reopened the day U.S. troops arrived.
Last Friday a visiting cleric from Najaf incited worshipers to kill Baath Party members who don’t leave office voluntarily after a certain a period of time. Two members were subsequently gunned down near where the cleric spoke. Shiite cleric Sayd Hasan Naji, one of the mosque’s most influential leaders, now implores worshipers to cease the aggression.
Other revenge killings have been reported in the cities of Najaf, Karbala and Basra in the Shiite-dominated center and south of the country. This was the scene of a bloody rebellion in 1991 that was quashed by the Sunni-controlled Baath government.
Helene and the ‘climate change’ experts
Larry Elder