Am I Paranoid or do these News Stories Reek of Propaganda???

Torture chamber discovered

U.S. and Iraqi forces chasing a suspected terrorist with ties to Iran early Sunday discovered a bloodstained torture chamber and a massive amount of artillery stored in a building in Baghdad's Sadr City, the U.S. military said.

"Had that thing gone off -- when you start talking about 150 artillery shells -- the extensive damage that it could have done in killing innocent civilians in Sadr City would have been horrific," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said at a news conference Sunday.

The building was destroyed in a controlled explosion by a U.S. military ordnance team. Video showed a massive pile of rubble, with some debris landing on nearby cars. Other vehicles had shattered windows, possibly from the impact of the blast.

There were no reports of any casualties among coalition or Iraqi security forces.

Sadr City, a densely populated Shiite neighborhood, is a stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.

Caldwell would not reveal specific information about the "known terrorist" that was the target of the intelligence-driven raid because he was still on the run.

"As best we know, this was some kind of Shia extremist element, some sort of secret cell," Caldwell said.