So many typos

For such a classy paper.

Apparently I must once again bust out the red felt tip and edit copy for hapless NYT.

Gunmen Police Commandos Abduct Westerners in Iraq, Officials Say

By DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, May 22 — Gunmen wearing police commando uniforms Police Commandos abducted several western civilians from a Finance Ministry compound in Baghdad today, Iraqi and American officials said, reviving questions about the links between official security forces and criminal gangs and sectarian militias. the use of excursive prose to skirt around the obvious fact that American-trained official security forces by day moonlight as criminal gangs and sectarian militias by night

The United States military also announced today that eight American soldiers died Monday northeast of Baghdad in separate attacks, making May the third deadliest month for American troops since the start of the war four years ago.

And in the capital, two car bombs slashed through congested urban areas, killing at least 27 people and wounding at least 97, according to an Interior Ministry official.

The abductions were conducted in broad daylight by gunmen in police vehicles police in vehicles who entered the fortified compound without firing a shot, according to witnesses, amplifying concerns about whether underscoring the idiocy of continuing the pretend that elements of Iraq’s government are tacitly or are not actively playing a role in attacks on westerners.

In recent weeks, some American military officials in Baghdad have said that a majority of the Iraqi security forces they work with report to militia leaders and cannot be trusted. Commanders in western Baghdad said that several roadside bombs targeting American convoys have recently detonated within view of Iraqi checkpoints.

Initial reports of who was kidnapped have varied and conflicted. An Interior Ministry official said the gunmen police abducted four German technology consultants. Some news outlets have reported that as many as five British citizens, including four security advisors, were among the captives while a witness to the abduction said he recognized an Iraqi policeman and a translator who were taken.

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Gunmen in commando uniforms Commandos, driving at least four white SUVs, entered the compound without firing a shot, driving past guards and blast walls, according to witnesses and the Interior Ministry official. They then abducted the Westerners and fled.

“There was no resistance,” the Interior Ministry official said, suggesting that Finance Ministry officials either colluded tacitly or explicitly or they were intimidated by what appeared to be an official Iraqi police convoy.

Similar attacks at government buildings, mainly targeting Iraqis, have come in waves, with many occurring last year. In the most brazen assault, dozens of Iraqi employees of the Ministry of Higher Education were abducted in November from the ministry’s headquarters in Baghdad by militiamen dressed in police commando uniforms police commandos. Many of those victims have never been found.

That same month, men wearing Iraqi police uniforms Iraqi police kidnapped four American security guards and their Austrian colleague from a convoy near the Iraq-Kuwait border.

Jill Carroll, a journalist for the Christian Science Monitor, was also abducted last January — and held for three months — after leaving the office of Adnan Dulaimi, a leading Sunni politician.

The building attacked Tuesday was under Shiite control. The finance minister, Bayan Jabr, is a conservative Shiite frequently accused by Sunnis of encouraging sectarian violence.

It was Mr. Jabr, Iraq’s Interior Minister until last May, who oversaw the rapid growth of the Iraqi security forces. He is a senior member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and was once is also a brigade commander for the party’s militia, the Badr Brigade.
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There. Isn’t that ever so much clearer?

You’d think that with 11,965 employees and annual revenues of 3.4 billion dollars (2005) the Times could toss a few of those Brooks/Friedman pfennigs around and get someone else to do this for them.