It's Worse Than You Think
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5973272/site/newsweek/
As Americans debate Vietnam, the U.S. death toll tops 1,000 in Iraq.
And the insurgents are still getting stronger
By Scott Johnson and Babak Dehghanpisheh
Newsweek
Updated: 11:55 p.m. ET Sept. 11, 2004
Sept. 20 issue - Iraqis don't shock easily these days, but
eyewitnesses could only blink in disbelief as they recounted last
Tuesday's broad-daylight kidnappings in central Baghdad. At about 5 in
the afternoon, on a quiet side street outside the Ibn Haitham
hospital, a gang armed with pistols, AK-47s and pump-action shotguns
raided a small house used by three Italian aid groups. The gunmen,
none of them wearing masks, took orders from a smooth-shaven man in a
gray suit; they called him "sir." When they drove off, the gunmen had
four hostages: two local NGO employees—one of them a woman who was
dragged out of the house by her headscarf—and two 29-year-old
Italians, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both members of the antiwar
group A Bridge to Baghdad. The whole job took less than 10 minutes.
Not a shot was fired. About 15 minutes afterward, an American Humvee
convoy passed hardly a block away—headed in the opposite direction.
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