Targeted Assassinations in Baghdad?

In today’s news from the Associated Press, two Sunni Muslim clerics have been assassinated in Baghdad.  The full AP report does not seem to be widely available in the US, so here are some facts quoted:

• Gunmen killed a Sunni cleric who was entering a mosque in Baghdad to perform noon prayers Monday in the second attack on a cleric belonging to the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, the group said.
  The cleric, Sheik Mohammed Jadoa al-Janabi, was killed in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite al-Baya neighborhood. He was unarmed and had no security guards.
  "It was a cleric coming to a mosque," said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There was no need for a bodyguard."

• Late Sunday, gunmen attacked the car of another cleric, Sheik Hazem al-Zeidi, after he left a mosque in Baghdad's eastern slum of Sadr City, said Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abdul-Jabbar, a senior member of the group. The cleric was killed and two bodyguards were taken hostage. The guards were later released unharmed.

• The association is a conservative group that has worked for the release of foreign hostages. It strongly opposes the U.S. presence in Iraq - an outspoken view that has made it possible to act as an intermediary in hostage negotiations.
  The French ambassador to Iraq and a special envoy have repeatedly traveled to a west Baghdad mosque to meet with association leaders to discuss the fate of two French reporters abducted here last month.
  Ambassador Bernard Bajolet has publicly praised the clerics' condemnation of the kidnapping and their efforts to secure the journalists' release.

Also:

• I t was not immediately known who was behind the gunning-down of two Sunni clerics Sunday night and Monday in Baghdad.
  The two clerics belonged to the Association of Muslim Scholars, a grouping of conservative clerics that opposes the U.S. presence in Iraq and has emerged as a powerful representative of Iraq's Sunni minority.
  The association is believed to have contacts with Sunni insurgents, though it denies any links with them. It has interceded often in the past to win the release of foreign hostages, and militant groups have asked the association for a religious ruling on whether kidnappings and killing of hostages are permitted.
  
• The previous night, gunmen kidnapped Sheik Hazem al-Zeidi and two of his bodyguards as he left a mosque in another largely Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad, Sadr City. Al-Zeidi was killed and the bodyguards were released Monday, the association said.
• A few clerics from the association have been killed in the past - most recently in February. But the motives in those and the latest slayings have been unclear.
•  The association rose to prominence as the champion of Iraq's Sunni Arabs when its leaders played a key role in organizing taking relief supplies to Fallujah in April, when it was besieged by U.S. Marines.
  The association's leaders routinely criticize the government of Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and call for the departure of American and other foreign troops in Iraq.
• However, one of its key members, Sheik Ahmed Abdul-Ghafour Al-Samarie, may have angered insurgents by criticizing attacks against Iraqi police that left dozens dead last week. Al-Samarie said the attacks should instead be directed against foreign troops - not Iraqi civilians.
• The group may have also raised the ire of the militants by failing to act as yet on calls to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, sanctioning the kidnapping of foreigners.”

The big question here, obviously considered though not stated overtly by the AP reporters, is whether Baghdad’s “cycle of violence” is entirely random.  Look at which assassinations have succeeded:  UN employees, humanitarian aid workers from other countries, and now members of a group that worked successfully for the release of Western hostages in Iraq.  Also, the Iraqi Union of University Professors has reported that more than 250 college professors have been targets of assassination since April 30, 2003.  (Maybe they would be safer, under any Bush-approved regime, without the word “union” in their name.)

Seriously, surely it is unthinkable that any Special Ops or other Intelligence Community-connected Americans are engaging directly in targeted assassinations – not of terrorists but of persons who show signs of being able to deal effectively with terrorism.  Surely no player of the “great game” would thus endanger the lives of everyone around, including other Americans.

Surely it is unthinkable that the IC is selectively permitting some assassinations to succeed, while successfully protecting such as Hamid Karzai (Afghanistan’s US-connected head).

Right? – But one cannot help thinking that an actual democracy in Iraq might reduce the administration’s control of oil from there.  After all, a genuine democracy, or even a reasonable substitute, would be free to negotiate with all customers rather than with just the US, to sell oil.  Right? -- US oil companies were Saddam’s biggest customers.  They might not be the biggest consumers of Iraqi crude under some hypothetical future regime.