DEATH SQUADS

So...Bush and the neocons say Iraq is better off without Saddam. They say that they have put a stop to all his torture and killings.

Not according to an article in the UK Times Online today I found via Buzz Flash.

This is Bush and Negroponte's "Salvidorean" Death Squad Option at Work in Iraq. Don't Read After Eating Breakfast.

THERE was no sign of danger as Mohammed Sammarai arrived at his brother Mustafa’s home for lunch last week, no hint that this would be their last meal together.

It was not until after they had been joined by their old friend Ali Ahmad that they heard a commotion outside and realised something was wrong. Even then, the three men — all government employees, all Sunnis — had no inkling of the terrifying events that were about to overwhelm them.

First two police vehicles pulled up outside their house in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad’s sprawling southern suburbs. Then came a convoy of up to 10 black BMWs and Opels — the favoured cars of the Shi’ite militias. Suddenly masked men brandishing Kalashnikov automatic rifles were storming inside.

“I walked home barefoot in a terrible state,” he said. “I could not call any official to report this. How could I when they were involved?” Two days later he found his friends’ bodies in the city’s Teb al-Adli mortuary. Mustafa’s right eye had been gouged out and his right leg broken. Other parts of his body appeared to have been penetrated by an electric drill, an increasingly common tool of torture in Iraq.

Mohammed’s body bore similar injuries. Both men had been shot in the head.

“Under Saddam, if you agreed to forgo your basic right to freedom of expression and thought, you were physically more or less okay,” he said. “Now you have a primitive, chaotic situation where anybody can do anything they want to anyone.”

Bush's hitmen? Could very well be.