Mass graves `are everywhere': Iraq littered with bodies, but number of dead unknown

Chicago Tribune ^ | 21Jan04 | Stephen Franklin

[xzins]

BAGHDAD -- They were killed in their hospital beds and buried in the hospital flower gardens, some with their arms still wrapped in bandages or IVs still connected.

And they were killed on long death marches in northern Iraq--Kurdish women and children, separated from their families and carrying the few household items they could drag with them.

Wherever they were killed, many were blindfolded and shot in the forehead. Saddam Hussein's whole country became a killing field.

Mass graves "are everywhere," said Sandy Hodgkinson, a U.S. State Department attorney who has been working with Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, the agency in charge of investigating the mass graves. "You follow reports, and they turn up in places you would never suspect."

Iraq is littered with bodies stuffed dozens at a time into cemetery plots, bodies shoved over cliffs, tossed in lakes or hidden in farm fields where vegetables still grow, said Saad Sultan, 32, a lawyer and detective with the Human Rights Ministry's mass graves research team.

So far, 282 possible mass grave sites have been identified, 55 have been confirmed and 20 have been explored. But nine months after Hussein's fall, the total number of graves is unknown. So, too, is the number buried, though the figure is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.

Among Kurds alone, for example, there are at least 182,000 people missing, 8,000 of them from one clan, the Barzanis.

[xzins]

Saddam Deserves Death Ping

Most of the graves have been found in the center of Iraq, leading experts to think that the dead are Shiites, victims of Hussein's onslaught against those who rose up in 1991 at the end of the first Persian Gulf war. But the regime apparently shipped bodies across the country, which would explain why those of Kurds killed in the north have shown up in the desert southwest. Iraqi officials also tried to cover their tracks by forcibly moving neighbors so as to eliminate those who might identify mass graves. In many places, a deep hole was dug with heavy equipment; then bodies were dumped from trucks and the site was covered with earth.

[Old Grumpy]

The hallowed ground of this country has become ground filled with horror.

[Chewbacca]

From the Leftists: Yeah, but where are the WMD?

[2banana]

Still for the left, Bush is more evil than Saddam...

[Alamo-Girl]

Bump!

[cjshapi]

You beat me to it. This monster needed to be gone, regardless of the reason.

[JennysCool]

Yep. That UN sure ran a tight ship.

[leadpencil1]

ping

[eureka!]

Prayers for the innocents. Godspeed to W, Avenger of the Bones. D*mn the appeasers, UN, left and complicit presstitutes....

[rickmichaels]

Wherever they were killed, many were blindfolded and shot in the forehead. Saddam Hussein's whole country became a killing field.

I'm waiting for fat slob POS Michael Moore to issue a statement about this...

still waiting...

still waiting...

still waiting...

[xzins]

Clinton used mass graves as the excuse for Bosnia/Kosovo and they've never been found. He gets a pass.

He promised to be out in one year. It's 8 years later. He gets a pass.

President Bush proposed a war against anyone who harbored Al Qaeda or participated in terrorism. He proposed ridding us of the problem of Saddam BEFORE WMDs became a problem.

He has found evidence of Al Qaeda and numerous ties to a variety of other terrorist organizations.

He has found numbers of weapons configured to carry chemical agents. He has found the technology of WMDs and the Programs of WMDs.

And he has found thousands upon thousands of murder victims in mass graves.

He doesn't need a pass.

Nonetheless, he doesn't get one.

The only answer: Politics.

[Tricorn]

Among the graves found were the countless political graves of American Democrats...

[Alamo-Girl]

So very true. Thanks for the ping!

[RobbyS]

This place seems to be like Germany in the spring of 1945, a huge charnel house. God know how it is in other countries where our troops have not set foot.

[RobbyS]

Apart from this is the stability that results from the military occupation of a major country in a regime full of unstable regimes.

[stylin_geek]

Yeah, and you gotta love the "exit strategy" talking point when it comes to Iraq. I'm still waiting for an "exit strategy" in Bosnia.

[gooleyman]

From the Leftists: Yeah, but where are the WMD?

-----
That's not only from the Leftists. It comes from our own dear Third Party Conservatives too.

And when the WMD's are found, they're all ready to be the first to say that they were planted. Heck, if I was going to plant some WMD's I would have planted them early on in the war. To heck with going through all this anquish when I could have just planted some WMD's and gotten it over with.

I know...Bush is waiting to plant them the weekend before the election. That's it...that'll be the October surprise this time. [I've got extra sarcasm here in case someone needs some...smile]

[xzins]

You gotta love it.

It's not even a year since the war kicked off and we've got the place humming again and are methodically hunting down the bad guys.

What more could you want?

[montag813]

We found more bodies in "mass graves" in 5 days in Iraq than NATO and the UN have found in Serbia and Kosovo in 5 years. But don't expect any journalists to confront Wesley Clark with that inconvenient fact.