Perspective: The bodies of Baghdad

In the Khadra police station, a ledger with blue hardback covers and clean white pages records each corpse found in this small neighborhood of southwest Baghdad.

In the 54 days ending on Christmas, 60 fresh entries in neat handwriting were made to the list: The name, age, cause of death and the precise location in which the body was discovered. The dead are mostly men, usually found dumped in the street or on waste ground, handcuffed and shot in the head or back. Many have been tortured and mutilated.

"We find a body most days -- sometimes we find six or seven at a time," said one of the Iraqi police officers based at the station, flipping through the book of the dead. He refused to give his name, for fear of being identified and murdered by one of the numerous militia and insurgent groups that haunt the city.

"Once we found six bodies lined up, all beheaded," he said, "and recently there was a body that had been dismembered. We can't always identify them. The majority are probably Shiites, but there are a lot of Sunnis, too."

Read the rest at the SF Chronicle