Guerrillas Kill 9 US GIs
Over 100 Dead in New Wave of Violence
Sectarian Killings at forefront Again

Sunni Arab guerrillas killed 9 US GIs in five separate attacks on Wednesday, bringing the death toll for May so far to 80. A tenth soldier was found floating in the Euphrates on Wednesday. He was one of three who had been captured the previous week.

Remember the Bush administration briefings in Iraq that touted a fall in "one type" of violence in Baghdad, sectarian killings? Alas, the bad news is that sectarian death squad attacks, which produce bodies in the street every morning, have crept back up. Sudarsan Raghavan of WaPo discovered that more people have been killed that way so far in May than had been in all of January, before the new security plan (the "surge") was implemented.

As if to underline Raghavan's point,
Reuters reports that on Wednesday, police found 30 bodies in Baghdad. Other major violence:

' MANDALI - A bomber wearing a suicide vest killed 20 people and wounded 30 in a cafe in Mandali, a predominantly Kurdish Shi'ite town about 100 km (60 miles) northeast of Baghdad, police said.

SAMARRA - A roadside bomb killed five policemen on patrol in central Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. . .

BAGHDAD - Mortar bombs killed three people and wounded 14 in Karrada district in central Baghdad, police said. . .

RAMADI - The bodies of five people were found shot and tortured in different districts of the city of Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. . .

McClatchy adds, "This morning gunmen wearing the ministry of interior forces uniforms raided the famous Sinak market (not far away from the Green Zone) and tried to kidnap the shops owners. The gunmen clashed with the gunmen and later with U.S. and Iraqi troops, eye witnesses said helicopters attacked the attackers and burned two cars. The gunmen fled and 5 citizens were killed and 17 were injured, ministry of interior officers said."

This newspaper estimates that over 100 Iraqis were killed on Wednesday in a new wave of violence.

MoveOn.org is urging US voters to pressure Congress with regard to withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Iraqi rice farmers in the south are beginning to plant opium poppies as a cash crop. The Bush administration is turning Iraq into Afghanistan.

One of the problems for the Bush administration with regard to the history of their fiasco in Iraq is that they invited in so many eyewitnesses from among "the willing." Gradually they will start to talk. Col. Mike Kelly of Australia, for instance, has started spilling the beans about former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He says that he urged Rummy to stop the looting in April of 2003, and that Donald over-ruled him. He calls Rumsfeld "criminally negligent."