Iraq

Several Iraq stories in the news today. This first one from a WaPo article about the Iraqi police and their role in the death squads, I find the most troubling.

the U.S. Army units have quietly moved back into some neighborhoods that U.S. commanders had just turned over, with fanfare, to Iraqi security forces. Iraqi leaders asked for the return of the American troops into parts of central Baghdad in March, fearing that efforts to build a stable government would fall apart if they were unable to rein in the Shiite-Sunni killings,....

(Also, has anyone else noticed the fairly sudden recent appearance of stories about wounded US troops? The first piece I saw was a CNN package on a field hospital last week, but, fairly suddenly, both the pictures and news descriptions seem to have started including pictures of wounded US troops and lightly graphic pictures of the Iraqi dead. The film Baghdad ER is coming soon.)

Insurgents shot down another US helicopter, 2 aboard, and also, a British base in the "relatively peaceful" southern Shia part of the country took thirty to forty mortar rounds last night.

2,443 US soldiers have died in Iraq thus far.