The Washington Post’s Amit R. Paley reports that U.S. troops killed six members of the Iraqi security forces Monday, the very people the U.S. taxpayer is funding so the Iraqis can protect themselves. Four of the slain forces were members of the Sunni Awakening, a group whose work with the U.S. military and Iraqi police is cited as a core reason for the decrease in Iraq violence. Some awakening fighters are growing dissatisfied with the arrangement, as the killings Monday weren’t the first inadvertent attack.

Paley also reports that "in other developments" the Iraqi government will make Abu Ghraib a prison abuse museum, complete with atrocities from both Saddam Hussein and U.S. interrogators who tortured Iraqis. The museum could be taken as a sign that the most horrific period in recent Iraqi history can now be memorialized. But as the shooting demonstrates, even allies of the U.S. occupiers continue to live in fear.-MB

Stick with Understanding Government on the underreported issue of whether five or 90 civilians died from an Aug. 22 U.S. airstrike in western Afghanistan. The latest is that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said death figures are hard to determine in "the fog of war." The Washington Post’s Colum Lynch reports that Khalilzad urged an investigative coalition between the U.S., U.N. and Afghanistan government.

U.S. military officials contend five civilians died from an errant airstrike. But the U.N. and Afghanistan government maintain the number is 90 — including 60 children. It’s good that Khalilzad has finally spoken up about the problem. But it may also lead to further estrangement with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who has called for a U.S. military code of conduct in Afghanistan. There have long been rumors that Khalilzad, born in Afghanistan, is gunning for Karzai’s job.-MB

The Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman gives a fairly positive review of FEMA’s evacuation and relief efforts in New Orleans following Hurricane Gustav. In fact, FEMA is now shifting its energy and employees to South Carolina where Hurricane Hanna is supposed to touch down this weekend.

But like Gustav, Hanna appears less dangerous that first thought. It’s now projected to be only a Category 1 hurricane. FEMA went along with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s warnings that Gustav would be the "storm of the century." It’s important to see if these unfounded dire warnings make getting people to evacuate more difficult for the remainder of hurricane season.-MB

Following the Enron scandal, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act was supposed to protect corporate whistleblowers against retaliation from their employers. The Wall Street Journal’s Jennifer Levitz reports that is not the case: out of the 1,273 cases brought before the Labor Dept. where whistleblowers allege retaliations, in only 17 of them has government ruled in favor of the whistleblower.

The reason seems to be that the Dept. of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which handles whistleblower cases, doesn’t seem to believe that Sarbanes-Oxley applies to subsidiaries of corporations. So hundreds of cases have been dismissed because they actually involve a parent company’s subsidiary.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) logically argues that the spirit of Sarbanes-Oxley is not just to protect whistleblowers from the mothership company. "Otherwise," Leahy told the Journal, "a company that wants to do something shady, could just do it in their subsidiary."-MB