Juan Cole: May 16, 2005 Part 2

Over 30 Bodies Found

USA Today/ AP report that on Sunday, more than 30 bodies were found in three separate sites. The bodies of thirteen men were found in a shallow grave near the Shiite slum of Sadr City. Another eleven were found at a farm at Huqul, a town 25 miles south of Baghdad. In Ramadi, a center of the Sunni Arab resistance to US presence, 10 Iraqi soldiers were discovered dead.

The LA Times plays up the sectarian angle to the murders much more than does USA Today:

' "If the marjaiyah will give us one sign, we will exterminate the Sunnis from Hilla to Mosul," said Muayad Kadhim Abady, a driver from the hardscrabble southern village of Ghamas, home to 19 fishermen slain in the Sunni Arab city of Haditha earlier this month. No one is sure how long Sistani can hold back the Shiite masses from exacting wholesale retribution -- a process that many Sunni Arabs fear has already begun. Newly emboldened police commando squads, whom Sunni leaders depict as Shiite avengers, have raided Sunni mosques and arrested Sunni religious leaders . . . "The definition of civil war is when the Shiites on the ground start to hit back," said Hussein Shahristani, a top Sistani deputy and deputy speaker of the National Assembly. "People are hurt very deeply and feel they should be allowed to defend themselves. Of course they feel they are capable of defending themselves. There is hardly an Iraqi household without weapons of all sorts." '