Suicide bombers kill 7 at Iraqi ministry

One was wearing the uniform of an Iraqi police major while the other was dressed as a lieutenant-colonel. Both had high-level security passes which enabled them to get through the main checkpoint to the compound, and would have allowed them to get into the ministry itself.

"We're dying to know how they got hold of these badges to enter the building," one police source told Reuters. "This is a disaster. We can't understand how they managed to get inside without being searched."

The Pentagon began inventing facts to cover for the attacks and the massive roundup of “insurgents” that made their way to prisons, such as Abu Ghraib. Hersh pointed out that the U.S. was incapable of obtaining decent intelligence on the Iraqi resistance but is apparently very adept at picking up on “sensitive communications” between bin Laden and Zarqawi that happen to make it to FOX News broadcasts.

The Iraqi resistance has the government wired. They have people in various key areas of the government. Hersh made a point of emphasizing that. In the meantime, American intelligence about the resistance remains at about the same level as it did eighteen months ago, scattered and incomplete. This lack of intelligence is what led to wholesale roundups of suspected members of the resistance (for a prime example of how house-to-house searches were conducted, see the Extra Features on the Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD. Specifically, the interview with the Swedish journalist who went along with American troops on house-to-house searches in Samarra.) Most of the detainees were kept in Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib has a notorious reputation amongst Iraqis. It is the site of the most heinous acts against prisoners by Saddam Hussein and his supporters during his reign. The Americans at Abu Ghraib, however, took things even further. Aside from the heinous actions involving beatings, using dogs trained to bite the groin areas, and even outright murder, one aspect that has raised the ire amongst Iraqis, Muslims, and others around the world, is the sexual abuse levied against the prisoners. Hersh prefaced this segment of his speech by stating that those involved in the actual application of abuse and torture in Abu Ghraib were not just acting out of ignorance or out of being victims of circumstance (understaffing an over-crowded prison.) On the contrary, the specific actions taken had to only be at the behest of people in charge of the intelligence gathering in Iraq. This goes all the way to the White House.