Ex-premier: `We are in civil war'
Posted: 03-20-2006 05:24 PM
Published March 20, 2006
BAGHDAD -- Police found 14 more victims of sectarian score-settling between Sunni Arabs and Shiites on Sunday--men shot with their hands and feet bound and dumped in two Baghdad sewage treatment ponds as the Iraq war entered its fourth year.
Nearly 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers sought to root out insurgents from farming villages an hour's drive north of the capital, and at least 21 other people died in insurgent and sectarian violence nationwide.
Iraqi politicians still have not formed a government three months after landmark elections for the country's first permanent post-invasion parliament, but they announced an agreement on naming a Security Council to deal with key matters while negotiations proceed.
President Bush and his senior advisers sought to mark the third anniversary of the war with declarations of progress, but they found themselves embroiled in renewed debate about whether Iraq has fallen into civil war.
"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war," former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told the British Broadcasting Corp. "We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, rejected Allawi's characterization.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... &cset=true
BAGHDAD -- Police found 14 more victims of sectarian score-settling between Sunni Arabs and Shiites on Sunday--men shot with their hands and feet bound and dumped in two Baghdad sewage treatment ponds as the Iraq war entered its fourth year.
Nearly 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers sought to root out insurgents from farming villages an hour's drive north of the capital, and at least 21 other people died in insurgent and sectarian violence nationwide.
Iraqi politicians still have not formed a government three months after landmark elections for the country's first permanent post-invasion parliament, but they announced an agreement on naming a Security Council to deal with key matters while negotiations proceed.
President Bush and his senior advisers sought to mark the third anniversary of the war with declarations of progress, but they found themselves embroiled in renewed debate about whether Iraq has fallen into civil war.
"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war," former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told the British Broadcasting Corp. "We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, rejected Allawi's characterization.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... &cset=true