Iraq Troop Surge Going Downhill

   We have checkpoints with police and Iraqi military troops all over Baghdad but Iraqis are afraid of them because they never know if these are the real thing or if they are death squads, according to   Patrick Cockburn who writes this for AlterNet:

"Be careful," warned a senior Iraqi government official living in the Green Zone in Baghdad," be very careful and above all do not trust the police or the army." He added that insecurity in the Iraqi capital is now as bad as it was before the US security plan came into operation in the city in February.

The so-called surge, the dispatch of 20,000 extra American troops to Iraq with the prime mission of getting control of Baghdad, is visibly failing.

There are army and police checkpoints everywhere but Iraqis are terrified approaching them because they do not know if the men in uniform they see are in reality death squad members. Omar, the 15-year-old brother-in-law of a friend, was driving with two other boys through al-Mansur in west Baghdad a fortnight ago. Their car was stopped at a police checkpoint. Most of the police in Baghdad are Shia. They took him away saying they suspected that his ID card was a fake. The real reason was probably that the name Omar is used only by Sunni. Three days later the boy was found dead.   Follow me!

     This can't be right because Bush, Cheney, and John McCain say that there is improvement in Iraq.

Tags: Iraq troop surge Shia Sunni Baghdad