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Length: 3:28
MILES O'BRIEN: Well, whether you call it raging
sectarian violence or plain old civil war, the
violence in Iraq is unrelenting, and increasingly it
bears the hallmarks of vengeance and retribution.
Nearly every morning authorities awaken to a grim
harvest of bodies bound, bearing signs of torture.
Joining us now from Baghdad is our CNN correspondent
there, Michael Ware.
Michael, first of all, it seems as if the number of
bodies being discovered and with clear signs of
torture is on the increase. Is that so?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's a
matter of great debate. What is beyond question is
that the number still remains beyond any kind of
figure that is acceptable.
I mean, on a good month, there are 1,500 tortured and
executed bodies showing up on Baghdad's morning
streets. Other months, there's over 3,000. And so
far, despite everything that the U.S. military and
its Iraqi partners have attempted to do, nothing has
been able to prevent it, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Is the best guess that this is mostly Shia
versus Sunni that we're seeing here, or is al-Qaeda
in the mix on this as well?
WARE: Oh, al-Qaeda is very much in the mix of this.
In fact, this is one of Zarqawi's great, enduring
legacies, the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader assassinated by
U.S. forces back in June.
It was his plan from the beginning, spelled out two
years ago, to start this very thing, this sectarian
conflict. S, what we're seeing is both Sunni death
squads -- some al-Qaeda, some otherwise seem to be
defending their Sunni constituency -- against Shia
death squads. Many of them arriving and operating
with the relative impunity that comes with being
within the police or the Ministry of Interior,
paramilitary forces, or the Iraqi army itself, all of
whom are American partners.
So, in one sense, the irony is that a U.S.-backed
government has its own death squads, Miles.
O'BRIEN: So, essentially, Shias who are a part of the
police and army are using that as a cover to engage
in death squad activity, and by virtue of that the
United States becomes less than a neutral player?
WARE: Very much so. In fact, U.S. military
intelligence, the U.S. ambassador here, has pointed
to this problem time and time again.
Indeed, the U.S. military has raided Ministry of
Interior police stations or facilities and found on
one occasion not far from where I used to live more
than 100 torture victims chained in blackened
dungeons beneath. So, these men are showing up in the
middle of the night, in legitimate police or military
or paramilitary uniforms, presenting legitimate
identification, and hauling people from their homes.
They then show up dead a couple of days later. And if
it's not them, it's their militia partners who are
doing it with the government's acquiescence.
You need to remember that the building blocks of this
government are the militias. Essentially, these
groups carve up power. And as the U.S. military and
the ambassador has pointed to time and time again,
these very militias are backed by Iran -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: CNN's Michael Ware in Baghdad. Thank
you.