If Jennifer Copestake the journalist is the same activist who did things like this, it worries me, and I hope she doesn't typify the MSM:

The steel bars of the heavy-duty, black Magnum bicycle lock wrap around her throat almost delicately, and as the police siren wails in the distance, Jennifer Copestake smiles to herself. The cops are coming. She’s accomplished her mission.

When Copestake and three other Carleton students locked themselves to the front gates of the British High Commission last March in Ottawa they were doing more than protesting the U.S.-led war in Iraq that was two days old. They were also continuing a long-standing Carleton tradition of political action through protest.

"Not everyone can get elected,” says Copestake, a first-year political science student. “It’s important that people participate directly in the political process, and take part in any way they can.”

Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an 'honour killing' to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.

As to the dead bodies and the Interior Ministry, there is a serious problem: dead bodies turn up all over Iraq, and the Interior Ministry is in chaos:

One group entered a mobile phone shop, the other went to the next door office of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce, police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said. The gunmen rounded up 15 staff and customers from the shop and 11 from the chamber office and drove away with them, Mahmoud said.

All the victims were believed to be Iraqis. The Iraqi-American Chamber is an independent organization not affiliated with the U.S. government, and maintains branches throughout Iraq and in Amman, Jordan.

The Interior Ministry denied that the kidnappers were police — despite the uniforms — and blamed the attack on "terrorists," Iraqi state television reported.

The raid occurred in the same neighborhood as the abduction two weeks ago of about 30 people, including the Iraqi National Olympic Committee chairman, during a meeting of sports officials.

A few have been released; those still missing include the committee chairman, Ahmed al-Hijiya. The gunmen who seized the sports officials also wore fatigues and used the same kind of four-wheeled drive vehicles as the kidnappers Monday.

Also Monday, gunmen wearing fatigues blocked the car of a millionaire businessman in a Baghdad neighborhood and seized him and his two sons, leaving the man's car in the street, police Lt. Bilal Ali Majeed said.

It was unclear whether the brazen operations were carried out by government police or paramilitary commandos, or sectarian militias or criminals wearing military fatigues, which are widely available in Baghdad markets.

U.S. officials estimate an average of 30-40 people are kidnapped each day in Iraq, although the real figure may be higher because few families contact the police. Security officials believe most of the ransoms end up in the hands of insurgent and militia groups.

The fact that it is next to impossible to determine who is doing what has already led to the replacement of one Interior Minister with repeated calls for another shakeup:

The shootings, kidnappings, bombings and extortion have prompted a public outcry about the effectiveness of Iraq's U.S.-trained security forces, whose ranks are believed infiltrated by Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias and common criminals.

That has led to calls in parliament for replacing Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, who was appointed last month in a bid to put leadership of the internal security forces into the hands of someone unconnected to militias or avowedly sectarian parties — a key U.S. demand.

But Bolani, a Shiite and former aviation technician, had no background in security. Iraqi politicians complained that they were unable to find someone with a security background who was not linked to a sectarian party.

On Monday, Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi confirmed that plans for a Cabinet reshuffle were in the works but he would not identify which ministries would be affected.

Other Iraqi lawmakers said changes the Interior Ministry were difficult because the Americans would have to approve them. The lawmakers spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

But common sense suggests to me that a situation like this would be a gold mine for a biased journalist, because there'd be no way to check the facts behind any report. I certainly can't check them.

And as we all know, a dead body is a dead body.

(It's tough to tell who has what mission, much less whose mission is being accomplished. . . .)