U.S. Role in Iraq confused by military killing everybody

Baghdad, June 2 (UPI) -

Tensions in Iraq continued to escalate today with further news the U.S. military may be involved in the routine shooting, bombing and running over of ordinary Iraqi citizens.

"It's not just Haditha," said Mr. Maliki, current prime minister of Iraq and leader of the unity government, interviewed within the reinforced blast walls of his Green Zone redoubt. "It's a nationwide phenomenon. Women and children are being crushed under the wheels of U.S. military vehicles every day, or shot at routine checkpoints when they don't respond immediately to demands to stop. Ordinary Iraqis are afraid to stop because they become easier targets for rogue American elements."

American commanders in Iraq, speaking on a blanket grant of anonymity for everything they might ever say to anyone about anything at all, considered the situation problematic. "Obviously, the hostility of the government we're supporting presents an additional challenge to completing the mission in Iraq," said General Smith (not his real name) about Maliki's criticisms and several others he heard shouted at him while traveling in a fully armored Humvee across 25 feet of sandbagged terrain between his sleeping quarters and his bunker office in the Green Zone. "For one thing, we've got to re-invade Haditha and the Anbar area in general because of the growing strength of the Sunni insurgency there, but the resistance from Sunni elements within the unity government to our invasion of Sunni territory because of a fear ordinary Sunnis will be massacred by coalition forces attempting to root out the Sunni insurgency attempting to destabilize the unity government...I'm sorry, where was I?"

Reports from Basra, once considered a stable and functioning area in Iraq, were also discouraging, as British forces were charged with unjustified killing of Shiite citizens in this populous and increasingly anarchic zone. American reinforcements were ordered to Basra to re-stabilize the area and to raise the siege on British forces under increasing attack from Shia militias now almost fully in control of the streets. American forces were dogged here as well by rumors of American atrocities in the north and continued bad feelings engendered by routine American torture of Iraqis under detention, many of whom were considered by the local populace to be ordinary citizens rather than combatants.

General Joe Jones (not his real name, rank or sex), speaking from the relative privacy of the adjoining toilet stall within an underground Green Zone bathroom, attempted to place some of the difficulties on the length of the Iraqi conflict and the unrelieved nature of the strains placed upon the military. "By the third or fourth tour of duty by some of these marine and army units, a hair-trigger mentality sets in where they just shoot anything that moves, or run it over with their cars. On a net/net basis, facing a half-hearted criminal unit investigation which whitewashes the thing usually beats a bad guess which gets you blown into the next world when that pregnant woman turns out to be an unemployed Republican Guard vet with Semtex under his dishdasha."

Mr. Maliki stated that the growing concern among himself and those Cabinet positions in his government for which he has been able to find volunteers about the routine killing of ordinary Iraqis could definitely affect the "time line" for retention of American forces to stabilize the situation in Iraq. "At a certain point," Mr. Maliki said gravely, "keeping the coalition forces here to kill ordinary Iraqis or to kill insurgents before they can be killed by Shia militias, or to protect either of those groups from al-Qaeda terrorists, or any of those three from Iranian or Syrian infiltrators, becomes a matter of close judgment, and I do not want to get involved in cynical calculations of relative good where the stability of my government is concerned."

Colonel Anthony Jones (not his real rank or name, and concealing his civilian status) spoke for the coalition by video phone from a secure location in St. Tropez. "The current schedule for invading Anbar to root out Sunni insurgents may have to be accelerated in keeping with a growing sense the unity government may force our hand and require us to cut short our efforts to keep the insurgency from toppling the unity government," Col. Jones said. "We feel if we can stabilize Anbar again, while minimizing the killing of ordinary Iraqis, we can assure the unity government of a reprieve from insurgent pressure and prop it up against the pressures exerted by militia infiltration of Iraqi police units in Basra and the Iraqi south generally."

The U.S. military's stabilization efforts took place today against a backdrop of numerous car bomb explosions in and around Baghdad and the discovery of the bodies of 125 ordinary Iraqis, both Sunni and Shia, who had been kidnapped, tortured and shot execution style, their bodies then dumped in open fields.

Summing up the situation, General Smith admitted that a lot of work still remained to produce a stable and functioning democracy in Iraq. "The new time pressures obviously won't help," he concluded.