100 Dead Bodies in Iraq

"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."
-George W. Bush talking to Katie Couric, CBS NEWS/Sept 7, 2006

On a day in which nearly 100 bodies attested to Iraq's unbridled violence, Democrats stepped up their response to President Bush's policies, with former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski calling the war "unwinnable."

Iraqi officials announced they had found the bodies of 60 men, some of whom had been shot in the head after being tortured, over the previous 24 hours. They said there was no single massacre or mass execution. Rather, the slaughter in two Baghdad neighborhoods was probably the result of multiple roving assassination teams, they said.

In addition to the apparent executions, a pair of car bombs and other violence took at least 35 lives and left scores injured Wednesday, officials said. U.S. authorities reported the deaths of two more American soldiers, one killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad and the other killed in action in Al Anbar province, the hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency in western Iraq.

In his televised speech to the nation Monday, Bush said that U.S. security "depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad," setting a theme that Republicans hope will sustain support for the war and their candidates between now and November's elections.