Somewhat lost in the shuffle of the news from Spain is this story from the New York Times, which demonstrates the depravity of the former Ba'athists who terrorize the new Iraq:

A day after two American civilians and their Iraqi translator were killed in a roadside ambush, two Iraqi washerwomen working for American forces were attacked by masked gunmen and shot to death, police officials said Thursday.

Maj. Riyadh Kadhem Jawad of the Iraqi police said the women, who cleaned and ironed clothes for American soldiers in the southern city of Basra, were driving home Wednesday night in a taxi when four gunmen surrounded their car, ordered the taxi driver out and then shot the women.

The Ba'athists deliberately targeted the women, eschewing the car that the driver offered to the gunmen thinking they were robbing him. Each woman was shot five times, or as the driver put it, "five bullseyes". Nor is it the first time Iraqi women have been shot; the story mentions the execution of three other washerwomen as well as the four-year-old daughter of a translator (who was also killed).

True "freedom fighters" make war on the military power of their enemies, and of course in a war, that kind of action is expected. Terrorists, as we have seen in Madrid, New York, and Istanbul, kill indiscriminately, taking out whomever happens to be unlucky enough to be around when the attack occurs. But these Ba'athists now deliberately target non-combatant women and children for their terrorism, sinking the Saddam regime to new lows of morality. In my experience, such specific targeting is unprecedented.

On the day following the carnage of Madrid, it's understandable that this story remains in the background. However, it clearly demonstrates the necessity of the removal of the Saddam regime and the need to hunt down the last remnants of his twisted supporters.

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