"This is Baghdad today"

Anne Garrels for NPR:

Their Sunni family was afraid to go and pick up the bodies at the morgue. The morgue, you have to understand is now controlled by radical cleric Moktada al Sadr and his followers. Sunnis are terrified of going there, because Sunnis who have picked up bodies there have been shot as they left. So Sunni women contacted Shiite women in their tribe for help. They delegated two Shiites to pick up the bodies. But it didn't work. When the two men got there the guards said "What? You're here to pick up the bodies of two Sunnis who killed five Shiites?" A gunfight broke out. Shiites fighting Shiites. This is Bagdad today.

Just goes to show that offing a bad guy does not necessarily make the situation better. Oh, but purple fingers, right?

By the way, I don't know if I'm somehow infringing on NPR by quoting their stories extensively without purchasing their transcript, or whether they welcome the links. Either way, NPR is a gem floating in the cesspool that is the American media scene, so please contribute to your local station when they have one of those godawful fund-drives. Or even when they're not so maybe they can make the godawful fund-drives a little shorter.