The death toll continued to rise Friday as Iraqi security forces fired on demonstrators protesting everything from government corruption, to a lack of public services, to unemployment. But another subject motivated many of the marchers: the removal of a beloved war hero from his post and the belief that Iran was behind it.
Many protesters in Baghdad and other Iraqi southern cities are carrying posters of Abdul Wahab al-Saadi, who was unceremoniously yanked from his position as second in command of the Counterterrorism Service in late September and reassigned to a job shuffling paperwork.