The Iraq Civil War That Wasn't But Was

There's a scene in Gabriel Marquez Garcia's great novel. One Hundred Years of Solitude, where a massacre occurs but doesn't. Blood flows, men and women gasp their last, the cries die into silence. But the massacre never occurs because the government successfully keeps the story of the massacre from starting or appearing in the news. Supposedly, Marquez' episode is based on a Mexican massacre of students that still is shrouded in government denials.

There are similar incidents known to history. Turkey still refuses to acknowledge that nearly one million Armenians were murdered and massacred in the early 20th century. So, the idea that the current Iraqi government is playing a similar game with the dead in the aftermath of the bombing of the great mosque should not surprise us. Given the lies and deception of the current administration, US complicity in such a cover-up, especially with the failure that an Iraqi civil war will mean for the Bush war effort, should not surprise us either. ...

According to The Washington Post:

The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared for his safety, said a representative of the Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, ordered that government hospitals and morgues catalogue deaths caused by bombings or clashes with insurgents, but not by execution-style shootings.

A statement this week by the U.N. human rights department in Baghdad appeared to support the account of the Health Ministry official. The agency said it had received information about Baghdad's main morgue -- where victims of fatal shootings are taken -- that indicated "the current acting director is under pressure by the Interior Ministry in order not to reveal such information and to minimize the number of casualties."