Top US spy rushes to Iraq

BAGHDAD—U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte met Friday with the Iraqi prime minister, in the second visit this week by a top U.S. official. The unannounced visit to Baghdad comes amid spiraling violence that included seven American deaths and the discovery of 56 bodies in the Iraqi capital bearing signs of torture.
The bodies found scattered around Baghdad were of Iraqi men between 20 and 45 years old, and all were apparent victims of sectarian death squads, police said Friday. All wore civilian clothes and had been bound at the wrists and ankles, police Lt. Mohammed Khayon said. He said the bodies showed signs of having been tortured, a common practice among religious extremists who seize victims from private homes or from cars and buses traveling the capital’s dangerous streets.
Such murders almost always go unsolved and Khayon said the police had no solid information on the victims’ identities or their killers. Shiite militiamen have been blamed for many of Baghdad’s sectarian slayings, which exploded in number following the February bombing of an important Shiite shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra. Apparently fearing still more bloodshed after Sunday’s expected announcement of a verdict in the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s defense minister has canceled leave for all soldiers.
Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi was heard issuing the order in video of a meeting between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and senior military and security officials, in which al-Maliki upbraided them for failing to stop the capital’s unbridled violence. “All vacations will be canceled and all those who are on vacation must return,” al-Obeidi said. Saddam’s trial was intended to heal the fractured nation by exposing the crimes of his regime in a court of law. Instead, it has been seen by many as worsening tensions between majority Shiites and the Sunni minority who made up the bulk of the former ruling class.
Many of Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs, along with some Shiites and Kurds, are predicting a firestorm if the Iraqi High Tribunal convicts and then sentences the ex-president to death, as it is widely expected to do. On the other hand, most Shiites, including al-Maliki, have called for a death sentence, and are likely to be enraged if he escapes the gallows. Al-Maliki said last month he expects “this criminal tyrant will be executed,” saying that would likely break the will of Saddam followers in the insurgency. The U.S. military announced the deaths of three soldiers in Baghdad and four Marines in the western province of Anbar, the heart of the Sunni insurgency.
A brief statement said the three soldiers died Thursday when the vehicle they were riding in was struck by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad. A separate announcement said one Marine died from injuries “sustained due to enemy action” on Thursday in Anbar. The military later said three Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7 died Thursday from wounds sustained during combat in Anbar. The military also said a Baghdad-based soldier had died in a non-combat related incident north of Baghdad on Thursday, raising the death toll in November to 11.
The deaths of two other Marines killed in combat in Anbar on Wednesday — Lance Cpl. Minhee Kim, 20, of Ann Arbor, Mich., and Cpl. Gary A. Koehler, 21, of Ypsilanti, Mich., — were not announced in Baghdad, but released by the Defense Department in Washington.At least 2,829 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war, according to an Associated Press count. October was the fourth-deadliest month for U.S. forces since the war began, with the deaths of 105 service members reported.
Last month was also especially bloody for Iraqis, with more than 1,200 Iraqis killed by violence in October, the highest level since The Associated Press began tracking civilian deaths in April 2005. Desperate to flee the carnage, nearly 100,000 Iraqis each month are moving to Syria and Jordan, where their presence has driven up prices for housing, food and other commodities, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday. The UNHCR estimated that as of last month, at least 914,000 Iraqis had fled their homes since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, chief spokesman Ron Redmond told The Associated Press in Geneva.
The outflow of refugees caught the agency by surprise because it was hard to detect.