Today in Iraq

• In Moqtadiya, four Shiites who were kidnapped on Saturday were found murdered, according to the interior minister.
• Gives death toll in Kirkuk bombing as 22.
• US security contractors buzzed the area in helicopters shortly after the Sadr City blast, but there were no reports of casualties among coalition forces. I'm noting this item because it's news to me that mercenaries are using helicopters. -- C

By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 34 minutes ago NEW YORK - The group Human Rights Watch said in a report released Sunday that U.S. military commanders encouraged abusive interrogations of detainees in Iraq, even after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal called attention to the issue in 2004. Between 2003 and 2005, prisoners were routinely physically mistreated, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme temperatures as part of the interrogation process, the report said. "Soldiers were told that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, and that interrogators could use abusive techniques to get detainees to talk," wrote John Sifton, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. The organization said it based its conclusion on interviews with military personnel and sworn statements in declassified documents. A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Greg Hicks, said he wasn't aware of the report, but noted the military is reviewing its procedures regarding detainees following a Supreme Court ruling that the Geneva Conventions should apply in the conflict with al-Qaida. The Bush administration had previously held that certain enemies, including terrorists, were illegal combatants and not protected by those rules. The conventions prohibit "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

BAGHDAD, July 23 (Reuters) - With concern on the Middle East focused on Lebanon, this week's visit to Washington by Iraq's prime minister may offer U.S. policymakers a timely reminder of how deeply troubled their project in Iraq has become. Nuri al-Maliki said he will also demand President George W. Bush press Israel to cease fire against Hizbollah, the premier's fellow Shi'ite Islamists in Lebanon, highlighting, too, how closely the region's problems are interwoven. "We are all part of this region and the deterioration may affect us," Maliki said on Saturday after denouncing Israeli action in Lebanon as "dangerous". Maliki begins his first trip outside the Middle East since forming his unity government two months ago by visiting Prime Minister Tony Blair in London on Monday before meeting Bush at the White House on Tuesday and addressing Congress on Wednesday. Maliki, who calls his outline national reconciliation plan a "last chance" for peace, says he will discuss better security for Baghdad, where a car bomb killed 36 more people on Sunday. U.S. commanders say more American and Iraqi troops may be deployed in the capital, where a month-long clampdown has so far had little effect on communal bloodshed, despite their killing last month of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There was little sign of reconciliation at a first meeting on Saturday to flesh out Maliki's plan. Many Sunnis stayed away. Facing elections in November that will determine control of Congress, the Bush administration will be keen to present Maliki's visit as a mark of progress in Iraq. U.S. officials are already characterising his sharp criticism of Israel and anger over crimes by U.S. troops in Iraq as signs of a healthy democracy. But with 100 people killed daily, by U.N. estimates, senior Iraqis warn the U.S. plan to replace Saddam Hussein's Sunni dictatorship with a multi-confessional, multi-ethnic democracy is all but dead and the oil-rich state heading for a break-up.

July 23, 2006 BAGHDAD — The uniformed gunmen knocked politely on Hamid Shammari's door. They took away his 20-year-old son, promising to let him go the next day. He hasn't been seen or heard from since that dreadful Sunday that changed the Jihad neighborhood of western Baghdad, and perhaps the rest of Iraq. For several hours on the morning of July 9, Jihad became a place of unspeakable brutality, not so much for the wanton bloodshed that has become a daily part of Iraqi life, but for the systematic nature of the killings. At least 36 and possibly as many as 55 Sunni Arab men were executed in what appears to have been a revenge operation condoned or even overseen by law enforcement officials. The shooting began early, in ferocious barrages that shook the neighborhood. Shiite youths acting in apparent collaboration with police officials cordoned off the area with barbed wire. Gunmen stood guard at checkpoints and prevented many from leaving. And later, men in police uniforms went door-to-door holding lists of names. Witnesses say the Jihad massacre, which many Iraqis consider a disquieting watershed in the country's descent into an undeclared civil war between Shiite and Sunni Muslim factions, was carried out with clocklike precision as residents cowered in their homes making panicked cellphone calls to U.S. security forces, the Iraqi equivalent of 911 and, in one case, a commander in a Shiite militia.