Another Checkpoint Shooting?

I can't confirm this one in any Western MSM outlets yet, so it's too early to say for sure.

Iraqi General Shot Dead by US Troops at Checkpoint West of Ramadi

RAMADI, March 15, 2005 - The deputy commander of the Iraqi army in western Al-Anbar province was shot dead by US troops at a checkpoint Tuesday night, a police officer said.

"The US forces opened fire at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) on Brigadier General Ismail Swayed al-Obeid, who had left his base in Baghdadi to head home," police Captain Amin al-Hitti said.

"They spotted him on the road after the curfew, which goes into effect at 6 pm," the officer said in Baghdadi, 185 kilometres (142 miles) west of the capital.

No immediate reaction was available from the US military.

US forces have struggled to build up Iraqi security forces in Al-Anbar, where the country's insurgency is at its strongest, and many police and national guard units are suspected of having been infiltrated by rebels.

I don't care how many explanations we come up with or how obvious it is that "war zones are dangerous, duh." I will never be able to escape the feeling that there is a lot more going on inside of occupied Iraq than we are hearing, and we will very likely never get the entire story. Too many things just look far, far to "convenient" over there, as if they had been deliberately set up by a PR agency for the Bush administration.

And while it's great that the Iraqis have their own government now, (even if they are going to be run by the Mullahs in Iran) what sort of government can it be when prominent figures in it keep dying and the rest are in hiding? Transparency has to be one of the first goals of a truly open, democratic government. This new system in Iraq has all the earmarks of being the complete opposite.