Today in Iraq

War News for August 26, 2004 Local story: Florida Marine killed in Iraq. "Three Marines went to a house in Hollywood to tell the father and stepmother of Lance Cpl. Alexander Arredondo that their 20-year-old son had died Tuesday in Najaf, family members said. The father, Carlos Arredondo, 44, then walked into the garage, picked up a propane tank, a lighting device and a can of gasoline he used to douse the van, police Capt. Tony Rode said. He smashed the van’s window, got inside and set the vehicle ablaze, despite attempts by the Marines to stop him, Rode said. When the couple saw the Marines walking toward the front door, 'My husband immediately knew that his firstborn son had been killed — and my husband did not take the news well,' Melida Arredondo told reporters before police escorted her to the hospital." (Via Daily Kos.) Bring 'em on: Multiple atacks reported on oil pipelines near Berjasiya. Bring 'em on: Twenty-seven Iraqis killed, 63 wounded by mortar fire in Kufa. Commentary Editorial: "The Army's internal investigation, released yesterday, showed that the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib went far beyond the actions of a few sadistic military police officers - the administration's chosen culprits. It said that 27 military intelligence soldiers and civilian contractors committed criminal offenses, and that military officials hid prisoners from the Red Cross. Another report, from a civilian panel picked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, offers the dedicated reader a dotted line from President Bush's decision to declare Iraq a front in the war against terror, to government lawyers finding ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, to Mr. Rumsfeld's bungled planning of the occupation and understaffing of the ground forces in Iraq, to the hideous events at Abu Ghraib prison." Editorial: "General Boykin has to be removed from his current job. He has become a national embarrassment, not to mention a walking contradiction of President Bush's own policy statement that the fight against terror is bias-free and not a crusade against Islam. (General Boykin preached of a 1993 fight against a Muslim warlord in Somalia: 'I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.')" Opinion: "You can choose to connect these dots, or cast your vote in November based on whether Colonel Mustard was in a Swift boat with a lead pipe. But Abu Ghraib can't be blamed solely on bad apples anymore. It was the direct consequence of an administration ready to bargain away the rule of law. That started with the suspension of basic prisoner protections, because this was a 'new kind of war.' It led to the creation of a legal sinkhole on Guantánamo Bay. And it reached its zenith when high officials opined that torture isn't torture unless there's some attendant organ failure." 86-43-04. Pass it on.