20 beheaded bodies found on Iraqi river bank

Iraqi women look at the site of a blast at a bus station in the Baiyaa neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq, on Thursday. Hadi Mizban / AP

This is how we win the war in Iraq. From MSNBC News:

BAGHDAD - Twenty beheaded bodies were discovered Thursday on the banks of the Tigris River southeast of Baghdad, while a parked car bomb killed another 20 people in one of the capital’s busy outdoor bus stations, police said.

The beheaded remains were found in the Sunni Muslim village of Um al-Abeed, near the city of Salman Pak, which lies 14 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The bodies — all men aged 20 to 40 years old — had their hands and legs bound, and some of the heads were found next to the bodies, two officers said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Meanwhile, a parked car bomb ripped through a crowded transport hub in southwest Baghdad’s Baiyaa neighborhood at morning rush hour, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 50, another officer said on the same condition.

Many of the victims had been lining up for buses, awaiting a ride to work. Some 40 minibuses were incinerated in the explosion, police said.

Associated Press Television News video showed an open square strewn with smoldering car parts and charred bodies with clothes in tatters. Bystanders, some weeping, gingerly loaded human remains into ambulances.

A pickup truck rumbled slowly away from the scene, with two pairs of legs — the dead bodies of victims — dangling out of the back.

Of course, I found this little MSNBC story, reporting that Iraqi security forces are still not capable of maintaining security of their own territory:

BAGHDAD - American military commanders now seriously doubt that Iraqi security forces will be able to hold the ground that U.S. troops are fighting to clear — gloomy predictions that strike at the heart of Washington's key strategy to turn the tide in Iraq.

Several senior American officers have warned in recent days that Iraqi soldiers and police are still incapable of maintaining security on their own in the most crucial areas, including Baghdad and the recently reclaimed districts around Baqouba to the north.

Iraqi units are supposed to be moving into position to take the baton from the Pentagon. This was the backbone of the plan President Bush announced in January when he ordered five more U.S. brigades, or about 30,000 soldiers, to Iraq. The goal is to reduce the violence to a level where the Iraqis can cope so that Americans can begin to go home.

But that outcome is looking ever more elusive. The fear is that U.S. troops will pay for territory with their lives — only to have Iraqi forces lose control once the Americans move on.

Unless Iraqis can step up, the United States will face tough choices in months ahead as pressure mounts in the Democratic-controlled Congress to draw down the nearly 160,000-strong U.S. force.

And of course, the Bush White House is continuing their stale, PR-story of staying the course:

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Tony Snow struck a different tone: appealing for patience as support dwindles for an open-ended commitment in Iraq. He urged lawmakers to "give the Baghdad security plan a chance to unfold."

The Bush war in Iraq is a complete disaster. It is a war that the United States has lost--the question now is how much more blood and treasure are we going to shed before we finally admit defeat? We are now starting to see some key Republicans turning against the Bush administration's war. Senator Richard Lugar's speech criticizing the Bush administration's war was a powerful sign to the administration that the support of congressional Republicans are starting to fracture on the war. As I've said before, congressional Republicans are facing two lousy choices here as the Iraq war continues to deteriorate. Their first choice is to continue marching in lock-step with the Bush administration's stay-the-course-surge strategy, even as the polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans want the U.S. to pull out of Iraq. The longer the Republicans continue to support the Bush war, the greater the danger of American voters throwing out the Republicans as Iraq becomes the primary election issue in November 2008. By supporting the Bush war in Iraq, Republican congressmen risk their own political careers by facing the wrath of American voters. The second choice is to start supporting some type of congressional legislation to resolve the Iraq war. Of course, this choice will anger an increasingly isolated, and besieged, Bush White House, which is hoping to continue this war until after President Bush leaves office in January 2009. So far, the Republicans are continuing to support the Bush war in Iraq. But what Lugar's speech shows here is that Republicans are not happy with the contradictions between the Bush administration's continued insistence on supporting the war, and the troop surge plan, verses the daily news reports showing the continued failure of this Bush surge plan in the Iraq war.

It is all going downhill.