welcome to democracy in iraq



American troops opened fire on ex-Iraqi soldiers protesting against the loss of their jobs in Baghdad today, reportedly killing two men.

Victor Caivano, a photographer for the Associated Press, said shots were fired as the angry crowd began throwing stones at guards and reporters outside the main gate of a former presidential compound. The site is now being used as the headquarters of the US-led administration in Iraq.

Demonstrators claimed two were killed and two injured in the shooting. But Captain Scott Nauman of the US army disputed this, telling CNN that two Iraqis had been slightly injured but no one had been killed in the incident.

Some of the protesters, angered at losing their jobs when the US administrator, Paul Bremer, dissolved Saddam Hussein's armed forces last month, attacked a Reuters news agency television crew. They attacked two Iraqi cameramen, one of whom was beaten on his shoulders, neck and head with stones. American soldiers guarding the gates pulled the other man out of the crowd to safety.

The demonstrators also hit passing United Nations and television vehicles with their shoes, witnesses told Reuters. Mr Bremer's drive to destroy the legacy of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist state apparatus has led to the loss of up to 400,000 jobs in the armed forces, security services, and information and defence ministries.

Critics say the sweeping policy fails to distinguish between the men who enforced Saddam's regime, the many who joined the party out of expediency and those who genuinely believed in its Arab nationalist ideology. They say the policy has created a large pool of armed and resentful unemployed who may turn to crime or to fighting the US-led occupation, perhaps as part of a Ba'athist underground.

At least 41 American soldiers have been killed in a spate of attacks in and around Baghdad since the US president, George Bush, declared the war in Iraq over on May 1.

roman empire? administrative crack stinks of zero-culture effort as expected.. effort totally anti-productive up to date.. no need to pray for wrath of allah- these idiots can be reliably expected auto-fuck scheme