Iraqi Mass Graves Don't Justify War

Middle East Times ^ | 12/11/03? | MARK GERY

[Dallas59]

Found this on LGF...This guy indicates that these people deserved what they got...

Iraqi mass graves don't justify war
MARK GERY
In the past few months the graves of thousands of civilians have been unearthed in war-torn Iraq. Not surprisingly, the White House wasted no time in declaring the dead to be prime examples of Saddam Hussein's brutality and a further justification for the US-led invasion.

But a check of the historical record on this matter reveals yet another calculated distortion by the US administration and its supporters.

At the end of the 1991 Gulf War legions of Shia radicals – the kind we've seen clamoring for an Islamic state - assaulted and killed anyone associated with Iraq's secular government. Urged to 'take matters into their own hands' by the first Bush administration and wrongly believing that Iraq's army had been destroyed, armed militants went from city to city in southern Iraq mercilessly butchering scores of innocents.

As put forth by regional analyst Sandra Mackay: "The rebels utilized their guns and numbers to seize the civilian operatives of the Baath government while former Shia conscripts turned on officers of the army. They hung their captives from rafters of an Islamic school, shot them in the head before walls turned into execution chambers, or simply slit their throats at the point of capture.' (The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein, page 24)

Dilip Hiro, another Iraqi historian, documents atrocities in the holy city of Kerbala: "Insurgents had attacked the army headquarters and seized weapons… They decapitated or hanged 75 military officials, some of them Shia, and tortured many more." (Desert Shield To Desert Storm: The Second Gulf War, page 402)

All said, several thousand policemen, clerks, military personnel and employees of the government were slain, according to Omar Ali, another regional authority. (See Crisis in the Arabian Gulf, page 147)

Meanwhile in northern Iraq, Kurdish separatists were gearing up for their own shot at the regime. As far back as 1961 – seven years before Saddam Hussein came to power - they had been staging violent attacks on Iraq's central government, trying to leverage off a piece of the country to form their own fledgling state.

Accepting Washington's pronouncements about a vanquished Iraqi military, up to 400,000 Kurds undertook a ferocious spree of mayhem that rivaled that of the Shia. According to Mackay, in Kirkuk "no one bothered to count how many servants of Baghdad were shot, beheaded, or cut to shreds with the traditional dagger stuck in the cummerbund of every Kurdish man. By the time Kurdish rage had exhausted itself, piles of corpses lay in the streets awaiting removal by bulldozers." (The Reckoning, page 26)

This unrestrained carnage, documented by several additional sources, is what the White House (and the media) characterize as "rising up against Saddam".

Unfortunately for the Kurdish and Shia murderers, Iraq's army was far from destroyed. After withdrawing from Kuwait in accordance with US mandates, the Republican Guards and other units regrouped and commenced a methodical campaign to hunt down the assailants and restore order. Using tanks, artillery, mortars, and helicopter gunships, they subdued city after city in succession.

In the north hundreds of thousands of Kurds took flight to the rocky mountains bordering Iran and Turkey. There they stood, cold and hungry, until the Bush administration began airlifting emergency supplies – a tacit admission of partial responsibility for their plight.

In the south the Shia who fought back were easily overwhelmed and killed, while hundreds more were executed at point of capture, their bodies immediately buried in accordance with Islamic law.

This is the principal source of the mass graves of Iraq.

What government in the world would refrain from using all necessary means to quell a violent uprising of this kind? No one denies that the regime's response was swift and merciless, or that many innocents were caught up in the retaliation and destruction. But if blame is assigned, shouldn't it start with the instigators of the carnage along with the foreign government who misled them about the forces they were going up against and yet egged them on?

Like claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or Baghdad's links to Al Qaeda, the mass graves of Iraq are another example of history and reality being distorted to fit the ulterior motives of the White House.

Mark Gery MA is an Iraqi Analyst from the Orange County Peace Coalition and a member of The Education For Peace in Iraq Center, Washington DC.

[Dallas59]

According to Charles of LGF, these people are not good people:The Education For Peace in Iraq Center; I discovered in the source code for their web site a hidden list of sponsors that included a who’s who of Marxist, anti-globalist, “anti-war,” and radical Islamic front groups, many of whom have had leaders recently arrested for ties to terrorism. (The sponsor list is still there in the HTML source of the page, by the way, hidden near the end in a comment.)

[BenLurkin]

Funny, far fewer graves were enough to justify our unprecedented attack on Serbia.

[dighton]

Mark Gery

[Imal]

The greatest threat, of course, came from the Shia women and children. So fierce were they as fighters, that it was necessary to rape and torture them before killing them by the thousands and dumping their bodies into pits.

[mylife]

Iraqi Mass Graves Don't Justify War

No, but refusal to honor UN resolution 1441 does.

[JCB]

In other words, the Shia and Kurds are actually bad guys and no amount of persecution of death suffered at the hands of Saddam justifies an uprising. Right, got it!

The author makes it sound like a democratic Western government was attacked by a band of thugs! And he says the US is misrepresenting history???

"In the south the Shia who fought back were easily overwhelmed and killed, while hundreds more were executed at point of capture, their bodies immediately buried in accordance with Islamic law."

Awwww....mass graves is apparently "Islamic law." Isn't that sweet? I guess I was wrong about Saddam - what a quality lad!

[cake_crumb]

"No, but refusal to honor UN resolution 1441 does."

He refused to honor the other 16 or 17 resolutions too (I'm losing count). 12 years of defying international law...forgotten in a few months by the public.

[NeoCaveman]

The mass graves that were supposed to be in Yugoslavia were found, in Bagdhad. Are timing is just a little off.

[Billthedrill]

Amusing. Saddam was the good guy, hmm? But the poison gassing took place in 1988, and the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Were those victims "bad guys" too?

This isn't even an artful distortion of history, it's simply willfully stupid.

[wizardoz]

The greatest threat, of course, came from the Shia women and children.

Especially the ones clutching their toys even as they were being shot in the head. Hey, you gotta understand. Saddam had to do what he had to do. Those toddlers can be vicious. They could take over France. Well....

[mylife]

12 years of defying international law...forgotten in a few months by the public.

Sad isnt it?

[cake_crumb]

Yes it is.

[GladesGuru]

This little mind with his little agenda has not understood anything about forensics. Far too many of the graves found came with detailed records of the deaths, thanks to socialism's weird propensity for record keeping.

Sorry, but this pseudo-intellectual's intellectual construct is not only a dog, it is a dog that won't hunt. Get thee back into the depths of Liberalism, down in the depths of the Pit - Liberal!

[piasa]

I thought the name "Education for peace in Iraq" sounded familiar. Looks like it's the group to which the former Ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson, spoke. Wilson is the person who claims he was sent to Niger to verify whether or not Iraq tried to purchase uranium there. I found this on Pacifica Radio's website which shows he gave a talk to the group:

Right now we are going to return to speech Wilson gave at the Education for Peace in Iraq last month on what lies ahead in Iraq over the next year.

Joseph Wilson, speaking at a forum on Iraq hosted by the Education for Peace in Iraq center on June 14th. Link: www.epic-usa.org

Isn't this group also associated with Soros?

[piasa]

Well, I reckon then that this guy won't mind if we just take all of the detainees in Gitmo, give them a little shock therapy and then run them all through plastic shredders feet-first! They deserve it after all...

[skinkinthegrass]

The Education For...who’s who of Marxist, anti-globalist, “anti-war,” and radical Islamic front groups, many of whom have had leaders recently arrested for ties to terrorism.

Hmmm...Are we to assume these Mass killings/graves are normal/common for this region of the earth????

[PogySailor]

The same mindset that apologizes for Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro....

[Bob J]

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[Qwinn]

"In the north hundreds of thousands of Kurds took flight to the rocky mountains bordering Iran and Turkey. There they stood, cold and hungry, until the Bush administration began airlifting emergency supplies – a tacit admission of partial responsibility for their plight."

This is my favorite part. Isn't it so perfectly neat and wonderful? If Americans do nothing to help the unfortunate, they are uncompassionate. If they do, it's because it was all their fault in the first place. Now, Saddam, though, he was innocent and justified in everything he did.

Man. I generally don't like the whole "barf alert" thing, it just seems rather unclassy to me, but THIS article has to be more deserving of that label than anything I've ever read.

Qwinn