Body of evidence (Andrew Bolt)

Herald Sun ^ | 22nd March 2006 | Andrew Bolt

[naturalman1975]

WE see the bodies bleed in Iraq and ask: "Was the war really worth this?"

Three years after the start of the war in Iraq -- March 19, 2003 -- we hear protesters say, No. Look at the dead. We've made things worse.

And so the terrorists have won one victory at least. They have made many in the West forget that the price of "peace" under Saddam was far higher in that grimmest of measures -- deaths each day.

I'm afraid too many journalists have helped in this demoralisation. Have you heard, for instance, the news from the trial of Saddam Hussein, proving how vicious was the tyranny we ended?

No? I thought as much. In so much reporting and opining there seems no wish to remember how Saddam misruled. But how can we know the war was wrong until we know what evil it stopped?

Let's first count the bodies before I then tell you the news from the trial on how freely Saddam killed.

In the three years since the war's start, as many as 37,800 Iraqi civilians are reckoned to have died in fighting, most now killed by Islamists.

That figure comes from Iraq Body Count, a much-quoted Left-wing internet project that has been criticised for including in its count Iraqis killed in robberies, "celebratory gun fire", or road accidents with military vehicles. In other words, its count tends to the high side.

By this high figure, civilian deaths in fighting in Iraq over the past three years works out to an average of 34 a day. In fact, the average this year is lower, but let's not quibble.

It is a shocking loss of life, but see how many more Saddam killed or ordered to their death each day.

Saddam Hussein took over as Iraq's president in 1979, and celebrated by dragging out rivals from a meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council in front of TV cameras to have them shot.

Counting his victims over the next quarter of a century is impossible to do with accuracy. But here are some of numbers we must consider.

In 1980, Saddam launched the first of his mad wars, invading Iran when it seemed weak. Over eight years, at least 500,000 Iranians and Iraqis were killed.

In 1983, to shore up his control, Saddam had 8000 members of the powerful Kurdish Barzani tribe taken away and presumably killed.

In 1987, he started his Anfal campaign to crush the Kurds in northern Iraq. Between 50,000 and 100,000 men, women and children are believed to have died. Thousands of civilians in Halabja were gassed.

Documents of the Iraqi secret police discovered in 1992 suggest the toll was even worse -- up to 182,000 -- although Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, the notorious "Chemical Ali" in charge of the killing, protested it "couldn't have been more than 100,000".

In 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait to grab its oil. More than 1000 Kuwaitis were killed, and in the liberation of Kuwait by a United Nations force the following year at least 22,000 Iraqis died, too.

Weakened, Saddam then faced rebellions in the south and north, which human rights groups say he put down by killing perhaps 100,000 people.

Or more. The Iranian-based Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq claims the real toll was 182,000. Human Rights Watch says "senior Arab diplomats told the London-based Arabic daily newspaper al-Hayat in October (1991) that Iraqi leaders were privately acknowledging that 250,000 were killed . . ."

THEN there were all the other killings, such as mass executions at prisons such as Abu Ghraib, where 4000 were killed in 1984 alone, and another 122 political prisoners murdered in March 2000.

Adds Human Rights Watch: "An estimated 50,000 opposition activists, including communists and other Leftists, Kurds and other minorities, and out-of-favour Ba'athists, (were) arrested and 'disappeared' in the 1980s and 1990s . . ."

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children are also said to have died from lack of food or medicine as Saddam defied UN sanctions imposed to make him disarm, diverted relief supplies and ran his country into the ground.

But be sceptical. Don't use any of the higher figures. Don't count the starved children. Don't listen to those who claim Saddam actually "disappeared" 300,000 Iraqis. Don't blame Saddam for the dead in the 2003 war. Don't add to his list the victims of the terrorists and torturers he paid. Be kind to the killer.

Yet when you do all this, you still find Saddam claimed on average between 90 and 120 victims each day. Every day. For 24 years. That's three or four times higher than the daily deaths in fighting in Iraq today. And that's after bending all the figures in Saddam's favour.

I know, liberating Iraq was about more than ending Saddam's reign of terror.

We must not forget the other gains -- that we know Iraq is no longer working on secret weapons. That Iraq now holds free and fair elections, last backed by 11 million voters. That the West has one less enemy and sponsor of terror. That democracy is at last now on the agenda of the Middle East.

There are other signs of hope, too. Iraq's economy grew last year, and is tipped to boom this year by more than 10 per cent, says the International Monetary Fund. Far too many people are still dying, but the Iraqi army has become more professional and terrorist attacks are falling. Surveys of Iraqis show optimism is high.

But it's these killings of Iraqis by Islamists and fascists that have us spooked. Each new bombing has critics blaming not the killers but the US, for having let loose the carnage.

That's why we must remember how many more died under Saddam -- and hear the evidence from Saddam's trial on how easily their lives were chewed up.

Saddam and seven former henchmen are now on trial in Baghdad over the killing of 148 Shiites arrested after an assassination attempt on him in Dujail in 1982.

Saddam this month admitted ordering the reprisals in which the town was destroyed, its farms burned and nearly 400 people, including children as young as three months, arrested.

Women have told the trial they were stripped naked and beaten. Another witness, Ahmed Hassan, then just 13, said that in jail he'd seen "a machine that looked like a grinder and had some blood and hair (on it)", and next to it the bodies of his townsfolk. He said his 77-year-old father was made to watch his 16-year-old brother being tortured with electricity.

Three weeks ago, the trial prosecutor produced the paperwork of the officials behind this savagery.

There was Saddam's signature, on death sentences for 148 of the villagers, including an 11-year-old boy and nine other youths aged under 18. None got a trial.

Other documents showed 50 of the condemned had already been "liquidated under interrogation". When the rest were killed, four men died with them by mistake.

YEARS later the secret police discovered the 10 juveniles were still alive and in a desert prison near Samawah. Saddam's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim, ordered they be killed and buried in secret.

That is how briskly Saddam's regime killed. That is why it was so much deadlier than anything Iraq endures now. And that is why we need feel no shame, three years on, at having deposed the man behind this dying.

We have saved countless lives, and given Iraq freedom and a future. As a result, we are safer, too, and for all that we owe no one a sorry.

[hang 'em]

Moose killing Moose. What's the downside?

[facedown]

bttt

[scottdeus12]

sadam hussien evil dirtbag who must be executed ping

[sionnsar]

I'm afraid too many journalists have helped in this demoralisation.

The press are liars, and have been for a long time.