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Something terrible happened here. Something murderous
The Observer ^ | April 6, 2003 | Paul Harris

Posted on 04/05/2003 4:16:38 PM PST by MadIvan

The coffins are laid out in neat rows in an abandoned warehouse. In each is a crumpled bag of bones, old and dusty but still recognisably human. In the open end of one sack a skull is buried among the fragments of a skeleton. Its eye sockets are empty. Its teeth are smashed. Beside it, two ribs point out like accusing fingers.

Something terrible happened here. Something murderous. Something evil.

The proof lies in a cargo container nearby. Its metal door hangs open and inside are pages and pages of files. Each sheaf of notes contains a picture of a man or woman. Each and every one has been shot in the head. Their wounds are mangled and gaping. Many of them barely looked human any more as the anonymous photographer chronicled their dead faces. It is a horror almost beyond words.

It is hard not to see the black and white photographs - two for each victim - and want to look away. Yet each was a brother, a father or a son. Or a mother or daughter or sister. Each had a past and hopes for a future. Yet each ended here, in this dry and dusty hall of the dead. There must be at least 200 of them in the plywood coffins roughly hammered together by a hurried carpenter. All of them are in bags, jumbled together in anonymous piles of remains.

'Whoever they are, they have been desecrated in their death. No one should ever treat the dead like this,' said Sergeant Simon Brain, a veteran of tours in Bosnia who has seen places in the Balkans that look similar to this. 'That is two countries now that I have seen mass graves,' he added with a shake of his head.

There are signs of torture too. Outside the warehouse stands a wall. It is dotted in the centre with a spray of bullet holes. Nearly all of them are at head height. There is a ditch behind it. If anyone was shot against the wall, their blood would have drained cleanly away. In another warehouse a dozen tiny concrete cells have been built of breeze blocks inside the hangar. In some of them portraits of Saddam Hussein stare from the grey walls. In several an iron pole has been hung from the roof. Dangling from it are rusting metal hooks. They are ideal torture chambers.

'We can't speculate on what this is until an investigation has been carried out,' a British military spokesman said. But one officer, speaking privately and clearly shocked by what he had seen, was more blunt. 'Just look at those photos,' he said. 'Look at this place. People were being tortured and executed here.'

The building has now been declared off limits after being discovered by British soldiers of the Third Regiment of the Royal Horse Artillery yesterday morning. An investigation will now be launched into exactly who lies in the coffins. War crimes investigators have been alerted to the discovery and the building sealed off and guarded.

No one will envy the officials who will have to venture inside. The warehouse lies on a sprawling and abandoned military base on the outskirts of Az Zubayr, a small town near Basra. No one lives nearby. It can only be reached by rough and pitted mud causeways that traverse a lunar landscape contaminated by oil leaks from nearby refineries. Multi-coloured slicks soak into the dust of the drained saltmarshes as they bake in the sun. There is no sign of life apart from the stray dogs that swarm over this part of Iraq.

The base itself is a mess. Most of the buildings have been trashed or looted and destroyed over the previous decade or so of war and sanctions. There are holes in many of the buildings and roofs missing from some of the barrack huts.

Yet the warehouse of bones was locked and intact. There is little doubt that the bones are several years old. No flesh remains on the long brown leg and arm bones or bits of rib. Only a few tufts of tough black hair lie scattered on the floor, where dogs have tugged at a few of the bags and spilled their grim contents on the unforgiving concrete.

But there is no doubt the base was inhabited until only a few weeks ago. Among the buildings are Iraqi army shirts still in their bags, new gas mask respirators, signal huts for an artillery unit and maps with military drawings on them. Yet the Iraqi soldiers who were here were literally living beside hundreds of corpses.

Exactly who they were is so far a mystery. But there are a few clues. Some of the bags are made of plastic and inside them can be seen a few pieces of military equipment. The green belt of the Iraqi army is plainly visible in several of the sacks. Were they soldiers suspected of disloyalty in recent years? Were they Shia rebels from 1991, many of whom were in the army? More than 50,000 Shia were killed by the forces of Saddam Hussein in their doomed revolt. But in most of the bags there is no trace of clothing. Just bones.

In one sack a single photograph lies. It is a simple ID card. From it a middle-aged man stares out. He has black hair, a long face and a drooping moustache. In life he would perhaps have looked pensive. But lying half covered by his own dusty remains, the man pictured looks sad and forlorn, regretful for the life stolen from him. A splotch of bloodstain on the corner of the card is reminder enough of the brutality of how all his hopes must have died.

It is hard to stay in the warehouse long. In one corner empty coffins are stacked four or five high. Whoever was doing this grim work was stopped before they finished their task.

That is a small mercy, but no respite for those already dead.

Inside the hangar the dusty air hangs close around the clothes and almost makes one retch to think of what is being breathed into the lungs. It is a relief to leave the charnel house. Outside the sun shines. A breeze blows some of the bone dust away. But inside the horrors remain, testimony to the crimes of a regime that, while facing death itself, will leave images of terror that time may never erase.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; US: District of Columbia; United Kingdom; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: atrocities; blair; bodies; bush; coffins; embeddedreport; iraq; iraqifreedom; saddam; uk; us; war; warlist
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To: green team 1999
every day that passes reinforse that president bush was right all along to stop this evil man.

That is correct. Time is also proving the President's premise that the UN is largely irrelevent.

61 posted on 04/05/2003 5:49:40 PM PST by meyer (how do I turn this thing off?)
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To: Calpernia
Did you notice the massacre in Rwanda?
62 posted on 04/05/2003 5:50:51 PM PST by OldFriend (without the brave, there would be no land of the free)
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To: MadIvan
Bump.
63 posted on 04/05/2003 5:54:12 PM PST by aculeus
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To: randita
"... The only reason I can come up with is that they would parade people through this death house from time to time as a reminder of what might happen to them if they don't stay in line."

Nevertheless, we should be parading the entire local community through this place like we did to the Germans near the death camps in WWII to show them what their glorious leader was doing.

I'm not a voyeur, but I had better see these unedited pictures in every Western newspaper to let the 'NO WAR ON IRAQ' people know why we're there.

The last thing the planet needs is another 50 years of Holocaust denial.

64 posted on 04/05/2003 5:55:09 PM PST by The KG9 Kid
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To: CyberAnt
Actually, I think all the peacenicks should have to look at this disgraceful display of evil incarnate - in living color - and they should be told - THIS IS WHAT YOU SUPPORTED - THIS IS WHAT YOU THOUGHT WAS GOOD!!

There was not one sign among the anti-war people that denounced Saddam's brutality. This showed where their sympathies lay.

We, on the Right, knew what Saddam was. Winston warned us about people like this. It speaks volumes about the Left that they prefer to denounce the imagined brutality of George Bush than the genuine brutality of Saddam Hussein.

Regards, Ivan

65 posted on 04/05/2003 5:56:38 PM PST by MadIvan
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To: gkhong
Storing these poor dead souls and denying their families the dignity of a proper burial for their loved ones is just another cruel chapter in this sick and horrible act.

Their loved ones are probably in the next coffin. They loved to "kill" entire families under Saddam.

66 posted on 04/05/2003 5:57:34 PM PST by Mister Baredog ((They wanted to kill 50,000 of us on 9/11, we will never forget!))
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To: MadIvan
They have no brain, just an agenda. They will keep repeating their mantra like parrots no matter what. Just like Baghdad Bob, they will say that is a wag the dog scene.
67 posted on 04/05/2003 6:01:35 PM PST by Minty
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To: crz
"Demonic"

Completely!
68 posted on 04/05/2003 6:03:08 PM PST by Minty
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To: OldFriend
Not this closely. 9/11 was an eye opener for me. I only listened to events in the 'outside world'. I knew enough to know something was going on. 9/11 was so personal to me, I now disect what is going on.

69 posted on 04/05/2003 6:05:40 PM PST by Calpernia (http://www.politicsandprotest.org/attack.swf)
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To: MadIvan
Grisly stuff Ivan. Should open the eyes of at least some people.

Prairie
70 posted on 04/05/2003 7:09:27 PM PST by prairiebreeze (Wanted: new bunk buddy. Older guys perfectly OK. Language no issue. Call Jacques C. for details.)
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To: MadIvan
Hi Ivan--autrocities: this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.
71 posted on 04/05/2003 7:12:32 PM PST by two23
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To: Walkingfeather
Yea... where is al Jazeara now....????

Broadcasting Saddam's mouthpiece's denial that US forces are in Baghdad.

72 posted on 04/05/2003 7:46:35 PM PST by Paleo Conservative (Time to bomb Saddam!)
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To: Jeff Chandler
Saddam's henchmen were almost Germanic in their penchant for documentation.

Hopefully the WMD programs are as fully documented.

73 posted on 04/05/2003 7:47:25 PM PST by Paleo Conservative (Time to bomb Saddam!)
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To: Jeff Chandler
The Russian communists also kept careful files, going back to the depositions they took detailing how the Romanovs were murdered on Lenin's orders, continuing through the purges in the '30s, the various World War II mass murder episodes, the Cold War, etc., to the tune of more than 40 million people exterminated. Much of it has come to light (what ever you think about Gorbachev, he did insist on glastnost) but the sheer volume of the material means much horror remains to be revealed.
74 posted on 04/05/2003 7:48:27 PM PST by 3AngelaD
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To: MadIvan
More than 50,000 Shia were killed by the forces of Saddam Hussein in their doomed revolt...

The implication being that these might be the remains of Shai who were killed in the rebellion, but that makes no sense if some of the remains have parts of iraqi army uniforms and there are intact identifcation papers.

I find it far more belivable that these are remains of Iraqi army men from the Iran/Iraq conflict or from Desert Storm.

75 posted on 04/05/2003 7:53:21 PM PST by clamboat
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To: MadIvan
I hope the peaceniks now have the good grace to shut the hell up.

Peaceniks don't have grace. They don't even know what it is.
76 posted on 04/05/2003 8:59:45 PM PST by Desdemona
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To: MadIvan
I hope the peaceniks now have the good grace to shut the hell up.

Regards, Ivan

Ivan,you must be daft,man.The peaceniks won't care .They'll blame the West for it somehow ,or deny it happened.Remember,being a Leftist means never having face the truth nor have conscience.
77 posted on 04/05/2003 9:54:04 PM PST by gatorbait (Yesterday,today and tomorrow..........The United States Army)
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To: ZOOKER
Did you see the ones filled with the 1500 MISSING Serbs and Romas that were kidnapped after the UN got there in 1999. Yep, the KLA buried them in a muslim cemetery and other places all around Kosovo and in Pristina in an attempt to hide them. These graves were found in the last year.

The UN forensics experts found about 2008 bodies right after the UN arrived. And, you know... they were graves with Serbs, Romas and Albanians in them. Hardly, genocide as klintoon called it.

Hmmmmmmmmm, where are the 100,000 murdered KLA that klinton raved about??? NO WHERE!! It was all a klintoonque LIE!!

Now, MASS graves as in Rawanda.... klintoon couldn't be bothered with REAL GENOCIDE!!! I guess the Rawandans did not have as good a PR firm as Rudder and Finn, like the Albanian KLA did. More $$$$$$ headed for the pockets of klintoon, half-bright and kla-clark.

kla illegal drug sales provide MUCHO dinero and can pay for some really GREAT PR!!!

78 posted on 04/05/2003 10:13:21 PM PST by crazykatz
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To: MadIvan
I bet this is the answer...
Were they Shia rebels from 1991, many of whom were in the army?
79 posted on 04/05/2003 10:22:24 PM PST by stlnative (Were it not for the brave…there'd be no land of the free.)
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To: maestro
Maybe,....These are 200 'victims' (used instead of mice/rabbits, etc.) in countrywide training in WMD programs (failures)?

But they all have bullet holes to the head.
80 posted on 04/05/2003 10:28:47 PM PST by stlnative (Were it not for the brave…there'd be no land of the free.)
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