Iraqi civil war has already begun, US troops say

"BAGHDAD, Iraq - While American politicians and generals in Washington debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad daily say it has already begun.

"Army troops in and around Baghdad interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.

"'There's one street that's the dividing line. They shoot mortars across the line and abduct people back and forth,' said 1st Lt. Brian Johnson, a 4th Infantry Division platoon leader from Houston, describing the nightly battleground that pits Sunni gunmen from the Ghazaliyah neighborhood against Shiite gunmen from the Shula district.

"As he spoke, the sights and sounds of battle grew: first, the rat-a-tat-tat of fire from AK-47 assault rifles, then the heavier bursts of PKC machine guns, and finally the booms of mortar rounds crisscrossing the night sky and crashing down onto houses and roads.

"The bodies of captured Sunni and Shiite fighters will turn up in the morning, dropped in canals and left on the side of the road ..."
San Jose Mercury News

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Tagged: iraq, war, peace, military, war+on+terror, usa