Despite our differences with the New Duranty Times, they are documenting the Iraqi situation quite well. Here is another detailed report on the growing chaos.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 23 “” Even in a country beset by murder and death, the 16th Brigade represented a new frontier.
The brigade, a 1,000-man force set up by Iraq’s Ministry of Defense in early 2005, was charged with guarding a stretch of oil pipeline that ran through the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dawra. Heavily armed and lightly supervised, some members of the largely Sunni brigade transformed themselves into a death squad, cooperating with insurgents and executing government collaborators, Iraqi officials say.
“They were killing innocent people, anyone who was affiliated with the government,” said Hassan Thuwaini, the director of the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s protection force.
Forty-two members of the brigade were arrested in January, according to officials at the Ministry of the Interior and the police department in Dawra.
Since then, Iraqi officials say, individual gunmen have confessed to carrying out dozens of assassinations, including the killing of their own commander, Col. Mohsin Najdi, when he threatened to turn them in…
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