300,000 Iraqis May Be in Mass Graves By BASSEM MROUE and NIKO PRICE Associated Press Writers November 8, 2003, 2:40 PM EST BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's government is believed to have buried as many as 300,000 opponents in 263 mass graves that dot the Iraqi landscape, the top human rights official in the U.S.-led civilian administration said Saturday. Sandy Hodgkinson said the administration has been sending forensic teams to investigate those grave sites reported to U.S. officials. So far, the existence of about 40 graves has been confirmed. "We have found mass graves with women and children with bullet holes in their heads," she said. President Bush has referred to Iraqi mass graves frequently in recent months, saying they provide evidence that the war to drive Saddam from power was justified. But some human rights activists have criticized the U.S.-led administration in Iraq for moving too slowly to protect grave sites and begin excavations, and have expressed skepticism that it will ever fully identify who is buried in the mass graves. "There is just no way -- technologically, financially -- that they're going to deal with mass graves on this magnitude," said Susannah Sirkin of Physicians for Human Rights in Boston. The U.S.-led administration held a workshop Saturday to train dozens of Iraqis to find and protect the mass grave sites. Hodgkinson said the workers would be crucial in protecting the sites from desperate relatives trying to dig for evidence of their missing loved ones. In the weeks after the U.S.-led war drove Saddam from power, relatives damaged some grave sites, using bulldozers that mangled bodies and scattering papers and clothing that could have been used to identify remains. The largest mass grave discovered so far, a site near the southern town of Mahaweel believed to hold at least 3,115 bodies, was damaged by relatives searching for remains. But officials say most of the mass graves haven't been disturbed. Mass graves "tell the story of missing loved ones such as where, when and how they were killed," Hodgkinson said. "Truth and proper burial is the first step toward reconciliation." Iraqi Human Rights Minister Abdul-Basit Turki said that in addition to families' need to find the bodies of missing relatives, excavating mass graves is important in building criminal cases against members of the former regime.
Ian, you remember this isn't why Bush sent us into Iraq, right? Maybe you should ask Rummy if he asked to see the mass graves when he was hob-knobbing with Saddam.
What seems odd to me is that we don't have marches in the streets of people carrying pictures of their loved ones, sort of like what is carried in the south american countries in regard to the one's who disappeared. I certainly am not saying it didn't happen, but that is a reflection of the regimes cruelty as well as the fear that still exists in the country regarding Saddam.
Exactly. Just how many of these murders took place during the decade or so in which we funded and armed that bastard? Can we ascertain this? Do we really want to?
How can you read that and not agree that there were humanitarian reasons for invading Iraq? The post war period may be a cluster, and we may not invade other evil regimes, but none of this changes that the world is a better place with Saddam Hussein hiding in someone's basement than ruling Iraq.
nobody is saying that there were not humanitarian reasons to remove sadaam... just that it wasn't the administration's reason - that bogus "operation iraqi freedom" tag got thrown on midstream
This is EXACTLY why Bush sent us into Iraq. The guy is a thug, a TERRORIST who murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people, including women and children. You think he wouldn't have jumped at the chance to wipe millions of Americans off the Earth? Saddam posed a threat. This was a pre-emptive strike. Unfortunately for 300,000+ people and the families they left behind, the strike wasn't pre-emptive enough.
Then why did the pre-war speeches by Bush the Younger and the administration stress the WMD so much and the human rights violations so little? Why is the mention of his treatment of his people is just about a footnote in the UN resolution? http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/11/08/resolution.text And none of this bothered our government in the past when we activly helped him. And it wasn't just a different administration, it was some of the very same individuals. If you really believe that Saddam was a criminal that deserves death by our hands for his crimes, then you have no choice but to agree that Rumsfeld, among others, is an accessory to that crime. He didn't have the chance. He wasn't going to get the chance. We are less safe than when we started.
Explain how we are less safe. Those who would go through the lengths it takes to attack the United States directly would try to do so regardless of the Iraqi invasion. They are not suddenly going to say "well, this tears it, i'm going to fly a cargo plane into a bridge". If anything some of the terrorist who possibly would have tried to commit acts of terrorism in the United States are now fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. I am in the National Guard, and have recently learned that I'm going to get deployed in February. I don't like the thought of taking a bullet or being in danger, but it is much better for me to be dealing with the danger than civilian Americans in the U.S. I think it is also undeniable that Iraq will be a better place because of the invasion...it is true that civilians have suffered, but when you look at the tyranny of the Sadaam Hussein regime it is undeniable that the vast majority of Iraqis will live better now than before (perhaps not as comfortable, but better). I'm not defending the administrations reasons for entering the war, or their handling of the conflict since then, but anyone who thought that the struggle would be easy or that control could be immediately handed over to the Iraqis was (if not a total idiot) extremely uninformed. I think the criticisms levelled by McCain recently have been justified, and i'm hoping for some clear deliniation of policy from the Administration regarding Iraq.
If the U.S did not intervene in Iraq and liberate it, in the next 5-7.5 years, those graves would be filled with a ton more people...somehwere in the round of 760,000!!!!!! So protest that ya damn socialists!
Wow, in the next five to seven years, we were going to encourage another Shi'a uprising, then allow Saddam to violate the no-fly zone in order to suppress it? Actually, how is it freaking possible that these mass graves were from later in the 1990's? For the past decade, we were pretty much enforcing no-fly zones, and the Kurds were autonomous in the north. So how did we miss a minor genocide? Either Clinton was asleep at the switch, or Reagan was. That's about as non-partisan a way as I can put that question.
Good luck and keep safe. Thank you for doing your part to keep threats to the United States and other freedom loving countries of the world at arms length.
The number under my avatar should tell you. In the wake of 9/11, our fundamental foreign policy goal should be to prevent new failed states in Muslim areas, and try to turn around failed states in Muslim areas. For all the bad s*** you can say about Saddam, you can't say he didn't control Iraq. The one area he indisputably did NOT control is, not coincidentally, where the one terrorist group in Iraq thrived. In Afghanistan, we drained the swamp (sort of). In Iraq, we created the swamp. It's an own goal, with the added bonus of a defender and the GK running into each other and getting stretchered off, and our captain freaking out at the referee and getting red carded.
yet another pathetic attempt at corollary argumentation - ok ian, out of morbid curiousity, please explain to us how sadaam is the same as hitler...
From WMDs to WM(ass)G(rave)s, what a shock. Give it up. Ironic thing is, there could be more mass graves to be produced in the future should the invasion fail and should the US army get out of Iraq. Hope this war is not a modern tragedy of history.
I guess your argument is that 300,000 deaths were not so bad compared to 6 million or so. We should've given Sadam more time to see if he could've bested Hitler's (or Stalin's) world records.
Again, Ian, we didn't go to war to prevent Saddam from killing his own people. (Unless you're saying the Bushies lied about WMDs to go to war in left leaning humanitarianism and nation-building, ala Kosovo.) Give it up and pay attention to what's happening in the world. There's going to be a quiz at the end of class.
We went to war to get Saddam out of power, for a multitude of reasons. If you want to run around in election year 2004 claiming it's a bad thing that Saddam is gone then that's your prerogative.
Correct. Just as the terror attacks and the stuff we see now, the ability to allow some families to put to rest their dead, (ie: the people Saddam killed/had killed) which is a rather important rite in Iraq. May Allah (God) rest their souls. I can take the good with the bad. In fact, if you had been listening to NPR, they had an indepth report of the families who applied for money set aside for such cases. The cases are sad, but in truth, so many people are in this situation that even this system to bring an end to questions is no solution, so far. People have little proof and some my be folks trying to cash in on the situation. Overall, it is too early to judge the situation. Even as we try to see some normal life, this will take continued effort and many years.
Okay, but that doesn't negate the ultimate good of getting rid of Saddam. Just like Lincon didn't fight the Civil War to free slaves, but in retrospect we're all glad that it was fought.
My God! You're not comparing this war to the American Civil War, in any way, are you? I could go into a lesson about the causes of the Civil War, but I fear it would take too long. (And yes, slavery, oddly, was a big part.)