About 100 Iraqi police who arrived in Najaf over the past week to begin joint patrols with U.S.-led coalition forces on Sunday apparently deserted their posts, U.S. military officials said.
In the past few days, U.S. forces coordinated and trained with the Iraqi police to begin the patrols in the Shiite holy city that has been besieged by fighting between U.S. forces and the militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
It is not clear why the police left the city, but their disappearance added to the skepticism at the U.S. military base in Najaf that a unilateral peace agreement announced three days ago by Shiite representatives would quell the ongoing violence.
100 “police” disappeared? And in Baghdad, not to be outdone by the Saudi hostage takers, a convoy of “westerners” was shot up and the “survivors” dragged away:
Gunmen attacked three civilian vehicles carrying foreigners in northwest Baghdad Sunday, killing two Westerners and seizing three others, witnesses and police at the scene said.
Two of the four-wheel-drive vehicles, of the type used by foreign contractors, employees of the U.S.-led administration and some media in Iraq, appeared to have collided after coming under fire on a main highway, and two bodies could be seen.
Locals and police said the attackers had dragged away three survivors of the attack. Their fate was unknown.
In one of the cars, a dark-colored sports utility vehicle, both front airbags had inflated and were stained red with blood. Bloodstains were also soaked into the back seat.
Nearby, a white four-wheel-drive vehicle had its front staved in by the force of the collision.
After the attack, locals set the two vehicles ablaze, and later shooting erupted between gunmen and police at the scene.
Meanwhile, Duhbya is playing with Saddam’s pistol:
A handgun that Saddam Hussein was clutching when U.S. forces captured him in a hole in Iraq last December is now kept by President Bush at the White House, Time magazine reported Sunday.
[…]
Bush shows Saddam’s gun to select visitors, telling them it is unloaded, both now and when Saddam was captured, Time reported.“He really liked showing it off,” Time quoted a visitor who had seen the gun as saying. “He was really proud of it.”
Well, as long as Duhbya gets to show off his war trophies to his buddies in Washington, I guess all the death, violence and chaos is worth it.