The Pentagon has long proclaimed its reluctance to count the Iraqi dead, civilian or insurgent, of its war. (Too many people remember Vietnam.) Then this weekend, the Pentagon and its media friends proclaimed "250 insurgents" killed near the Shiite holy city of Najaf by Iraqi government soldiers with US help. Why, the surge was already working.
Now the figure is 200 or sometimes 150, and the truth is starting to leak out.
These were not insurgents, but members of a tiny Shiite sect camping out near a pimgrimage site. (Guerillas do not pitch camp and wait to be killed.)
The Iraqi government soldiers represent the Shiite mainsteam. Did the minority plan violence? We know that the majority did, and that the US helped kill another large group of Iraqis.
Given the Bush record, says Burt Blumert, these people will turn out to have been pacifists. Burt especially enjoyed the sign at the weekend antiwar rally: The Emperor Has No Brains.
