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.

[speekinout]

But with that much oil in Iraq and our severing of Europe's business relationship with that oil and its owner (the people of Iraq as represented by Saddam), we need to find and present the evidence.

Your argument is really weak. If we went there for the oil, we would have started taking it by now, not giving the revenues to the Iraqis. And we wouldn't be spending so much money and effort to make them self-governing.

Blaming America for all the world's ills is getting to be a tired argument.

[nuconvert]

This probably best displays why a number is difficult to come up with.

[nuconvert]

Thank you for posting that link.

[Republican Wildcat]

That's a depressing sight...

[nuconvert]

"A picture's worth a thousand words"

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

He was seeking to acquire long range missiles, owned missiles with reservoirs, had used WMDs to murder Iraqis in over 40 villages, invaded his neighbor.

With the ease of restarting his bioweapons production, his financing of international terrorism ~ his intent, his history, high speed communications and transportation ~ making the possibility of his obtaining WMDs easier by the day, post 9-11 ~ sorry, the MAN WAS an imminent threat to civilization.

WMDs were never the number one reason to go after Saddam. That was a creation of our enemies, both foreign and domestic. The same folks who misled and are still misleading, the masses daily through newswires fed to most every American hometown print and TV news outlet.

We had absolute cause to take him out.

Just cause.

 

  Proud to Have Liberated Iraq 

[PhilDragoo]

Kosovo, the Wag the Dog War, O The Ethnic Cleansing.

Kosovo, where Obercheekbone Weasel Klank massacred refugee convoys, maimed women and children in a sea of tractor parts.

Kosovo, where Herr General Weasel von Klankton tried to ignite World War III by siccing General Sir Jackson on Ivan at Pristina.

Kosovo, the Kwagmire for the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries: another Klington Legacy.

Now, again, here is The Book of 250 photographs which cannot be described.

MASS GRAVES

[BOBTHENAILER]

Kosovo, the Kwagmire for the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries: another Klington Legacy

Magnificent job of compilation photos on the REAL Butcher.

Weasley is a bush leaguer.

[George W. Bush]

xzins: Suffice it to say that they've proven it to me.

Well, suffice it to say that this is not the first time we must simply disagree in our conclusions over textual evidence. ; )

Cowgirl, I take your points as read but simply don't agree. I'll just say that your second paragraph seems to build up the idea that he did pose a WMD threat of some immediacy while your third paragraph immediately followed on by denying that WMD ever were relevant to our war pretext/justification/whatever.

Sorry, you just don't get to score points on both. One or the other, please.

I suggest you review Secretary Powell's speeches and the evidence he presented at the U.N. when he sought their authorization for war. Not that we ever needed it or that we should have even sought it. Unless my memory of those events are yet another big liberal media hallucination too. (Well, okay, yes, Powell's liberal and does appear to hallucinate but that's not what I meant.)

[George W. Bush]

Weasely bump.

Please don't spare the bandwidth on posting links to Kamikaze Klark's Kosovo debacle.

I noted that Bill Bennett correctly identified Clark as the most scary Dim on the stage after the NH primary. Yes, even including Sharpton and Kucinich. I agree with Bennett here.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping and link!

[BagCamAddict]

And not just old ones from years ago... many right before the war as well... blindfolded and hands tied behind their backs...:

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks for the link to that site. I saved it to my favorites for future reference ...

[autoresponder]

I'm still waiting for the "exit strategy" in Germany and Korea!

[onyx]

Good God. Thanks for the ping.

[Thom Pain]

"Yep. That UN sure ran a tight ship."

And let's not forget that the UN was raking in BILLIONS from the "oil for food" program. Of course, DanPeterTom were outraged by this and constantly blasted the UN for its hypocricy! Huh? What's that you say? DanPeterTom never mentioned it? How can that be? It's outrageous and they are our eyes and ears on the world! Oh my!

[autoresponder]

You have thinking mind, as opposed to a lump of gray matter.

[autoresponder]

Good post!

A which minimum count will this be "unacceptable" or "insensitive"?

What other civilians were slaughtered in WWII?

Is it an "anti-whatever" to expose other atrocities?

[hershey]

Somehow this will play out in the media as "The '90's mass killings were George Bush senior's fault. What went on afterward is all junior's fault, and we shouldn't be there." Moving on, let's lead the nightly news with the daily count of US casualties since Bush landed on the aircraft carrier. And that's another smear Clark's been spouting on the stump, besides GW being a deserter, he had no right to wear the flight uniform, the whole thing was staged, on and on to make you sick. I can't even look at Kerry, he's such a phony, and now the media's annointed him with inflated polling numbers. Where's our boy, Howie, when you need him? We have to figure out a way to resuscitate his candidacy.