Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Religious bigotry motivates killing of noncombatants in Iraq

NY Times:

Armed men dressed as police officers burst into a primary school in a town south of Baghdad on Monday, rounded up five Shiite teachers and their driver, marched them to an empty classroom and killed them, a police official said. Classes had just finished for the day at the Jazeera primary school in Muwelha, a Sunni Arab suburb of Iskandariya, when the gunmen entered the building at 1:15 p.m., forced the six men into the room and shot them dead.

The killings took place while some children were still at the school.

In the past, teachers have rarely if ever been singled out, and this attack raised fears that Iraqi schools, largely unprotected, could become targets. But the killings appeared to have been motivated more by sectarian hatred than any animosity toward the profession, said the official, who identified himself as Capt. Abu al-Hars.

He said the gunmen were disguised Sunni Arab fighters. Shiite civilians of all types have been victims of insurgent attacks in recent weeks.

And today, a suicide bomber attacked a group of Iraqis applying for jobs as policemen in Baquba north of Baghdad, killing nine and wounding 21, a police officer and Adhid Mita'ab, an official in Baqouba General Hospital, said in a report by The Associated Press. In addition, two prisoners and four policemen were killed when gunmen attacked a minibus taking the prisoners from Baghdad to Abu Ghraib jail.

The deliberate killing of non combatants is a war crime that has become a common tactic of the odious operatives of the enemy in Iraq. They are too weak to attack defended positions or take on combatants. The news of these killings should be described in the context of the enemy's weakness. Most are done for political/media coverage. If the coverage accurately described them as a tactic of the weak, the emotionally insecure enemy would get less mileage out of the act and would be less inclined to act this way. The media'a failure to place thses acts in their proper context is aiding the enemy and getting more innocent people killed.