Summary here.

Chaos abides.

A system of iron weirs in the Tigris River 20 miles southeast of Baghdad was designed to prevent lily pads, known here as “Nile flower,” from traveling down-river and clogging canals vital to farmers for irrigating Iraq’s south.

But now, the weirs also catch corpses that float down from the capital, murder victims in the sectarian violence that blights Iraq.

[snip]

Local police in the nearby town of Swaira say that since January 2005 they have collected 339 bodies of men, women and children from the filters. It’s considered one of the highest numbers of corpses found in a single location in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

“Every day, we find bodies in the river,” an official at the Swaira police force’s crime department told ABC News. “Most of them are of Iraqis living in the bloody areas to the south of Baghdad.”

[snip]

Identifying the bodies is no easy task. Many have spent more than 10 days in the water. Some are mutilated or have been eaten by fish. Identifying features such as scars and tattoos, as well as distinctive clothing, are sometimes the only means of verifying their identity. So far, only 91 bodies have been identified by their families.

[snip]

The Tigris River is not the only place where bodies are found. Others include a sewage treatment plant in the southern Baghdad suburb of al Rustomia, and the Al Maleh canal that irrigates farming country to the west of Baghdad. It’s a predominantly Sunni area where many Shiite pilgrims have been killed over the past two years in towns like Latifia, Yousofia and Mahmodia. Article

Are al-Maliki’s days numbered?

One month out from the midterm elections, are any further deaths (of Iraqis, of U.S. troops) a crass political commodity in the electoral calculus of an administration that cannot accept the reality on the ground and the consequences of their misguided and flawed policies?

With violence reaching new heights every week — this past week alone claimed the lives of 22 American soldiers — the Bush administration is starting to worry that reports of more American deaths so close to the mid-term elections could hurt the Republican Party.…

And the death toll on Iraqis has not been any kinder. The number of corpses that show up around the country’s morgues every day now averages around 50-60. The bodies typically have their hands and feet tied and show signs of torture and mutilation. Also on the increase is the number of attacks on American and Iraqi government forces.

And as if to add insult to injury, only a day after President George W. Bush declared the Iraqi city of Tall Afar as one of the safest in Iraq, insurgents detonated a truck bomb in that city killing eight people. Article

Follow-up to a story mentioned yesterday:

Iraqi authorities have arrested a produce supplier and four cooks after hundreds of police fell sick at their training barracks in an apparent bout of food poisoning, a spokesman said. Article