Cal It By Its Name ... A Human Rights Massacre

The Washington Post details the massive violence in the days following the bombing of the Shiite Muslim Shrine.

MORE THAN 1,300 KILLED ... just in Baghdad.

The disclosure of the death tolls followed accusations by the U.S. military and later Iraqi officials that the news media had exaggerated the violence between Shiites and Sunnis over the past few days.

... most of the bloodletting came at the hands of self-styled executioners.

... faces of the dead: men shot in the mouth, men shot in the head, men covered with blood, men with bindings twisted around their necks.

Muqtada Al Sadr's fingerprints are all over much of the slaughter (though given the immensity of the slaughter I'd be surprised if the Badr Brigade and official Iraqi Security forces weren't also involved).

Call it what it was ... a human rights massacre. Will any of the Shiite leaders be held responsible?

And where were the U.S. forces while this slaughter was going on? Maintaining a "low profile" or "in the barracks" as has been suggested? Who made that call?



UPDATE: Robert Reid of the Associated Press provides an analysis of the crisis in which he discusses the role played by Muqtada Al Sadr and his private militia the Mehdi Army.

In effect, al-Sadr's followers stirred up trouble, and then took credit for stopping it.

Even the Americans, who battled al-Sadr's militia in his two major uprisings, appeared unsure how to deal with the cleric. During a press conference Saturday, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said sectarian unrest provided the government with "an opportunity to get rid of the militias."

Then Lynch suggested the time was not right for a showdown and that getting rid of the militias will take "a period of time."