Iraqis Dig Up Mass Grave; Baghdad Police Reappear

[Monster]

By Huda Majeed Saleh

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis dug corpses from a mass grave on Sunday and police reappeared in Baghdad as Iraq (news - web sites) grappled with the brutality of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s rule and the lawless aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion that ended it.

At a farmland site near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Najaf, Iraqis clawed through earth to uncover scores of bodies, some with blindfolds and hands tied, of men and women apparently executed during a 1991 Shi'ite uprising.

Bullet casings, combs, coins and watches lay among them. Some had identity cards in their rotting clothes. Yellow twine coated with a coppery crust, possibly blood, bound their wrists.

"This is one, this is one," said an Iraqi man who helped dig, pointing out bones and clothes at the site about 20 km (13 miles) north of Najaf, which lies south of Baghdad. Officials helping in the excavation said 47 corpses had been dug up.

On Saturday, Iraqis uncovered another mass grave near the ancient city of Babylon, digging up dozens of bones wrapped in stained blankets and skulls with rectangles cut out of the back.

"Some of the skulls appear to have been cut open; maybe they were experimenting with the prisoners. Some were executed, you can see bullet holes," said U.S. Lieutenant David Lewis.

Tens of thousands of Shi'ites and Kurds are thought to have been killed when Saddam's forces crushed revolts after U.S.-led forces drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the decisive American defeat of Saddam's government was "a demonstration to the world that an awful lot of countries don't think it's a good idea for countries to have weapons of mass destruction, or to be on the terrorist list, or to have relationships with terrorist networks."

"That message is a good message for the world," he told a television interviewer. "It's a healthy one ... and we may see some behavior modification."

Full Story

My thoughts: Shouldn't the message that Rumsfeld said have been more along the lines of the world will not stand for genocide at the hands of an evil dictator or something? The mass graves and hundreds of thousands of bodies have little if anything to do with WMDs or terrorist forces.

[Red]

a great guy, huh?

i guess the US should have just left him alone

[JAT]

This sort of brutality is going to be seen, before not long, in the southwestern U.S. The Reconquistas will be burrying Americans in mass graves, after they have been beaten and brutally executed. NEVERTHELESS, the U.S. armed forces are being sent TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET to fight in no way for the well-being of U.S. citizens. The U.S. is being INVADED, yet all the lock-step Neo-Con Dittohead Let-Freedom-Ringers can focus on is IRAQ.

[Johnson]

Oh no, Saddam put down a Shi'aa uprising. What a criminal.

Shi'aa are something like 5% of Iraq.. you people act like this is a genocide.

[Noddy]

LOL, are you serious Johnson?

[Johnson]

yep.

[Monster]

MAHAWIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi families wailed with grief on Wednesday at the site of a vast mass grave, their relatives among up to 15,000 people reported missing in the area during Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s rule.

. . .

As an earthmover scraped heaps of rich brown earth from the site, bones protruded from the dirt. Once extricated, skulls and what looked like the bones from the rest of the bodies were heaped into crumbled piles or stuffed into plastic bags.

Clothing hung from the bones. Some skulls were cracked.

"I believe my brother and father have been buried in this place," said one aggrieved man who did not give his name.

"Saddam's security forces came to the house to get them one day in 1991."

MORE THAN 3,000 UNEARTHED

Rafid al-Husseini, a local Iraqi doctor trying to organize the retrieval, said more than 3,000 bodies already had been unearthed in seven days of digging and many more could be found.

Husseini estimated between 10,000 to 15,000 Iraqis had been reported missing in a large swathe of the region south of Baghdad, but, with the gruesome search still under way, it was not clear if all those unaccounted for were at Mahawil.



Full Story

[Atcha]

I hope they will find the "invisible" victims "buried" by the US army during the first Gulf War as well

"Daniel wondered what happened to the estimated 6,000 Iraqi defenders who had vanished. "Where are the bodies?" he finally asked the First Division's public affairs officer, an army major. "What bodies?" the major replied.

Months later, Daniel and the world would learn why the dead had eluded eyewitnesses, cameras and video footage. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them firing their weapons from first world war-style trenches, had been buried by ploughs mounted on Abrams tanks. The tanks had flanked the lines so that tons of sand from the plough spoil had funnelled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, straddling the trench line, came Bradleys pumping machine-gun bullets into Iraqi troops.

"I came through right after the lead company," said Colonel Anthony Moreno. "What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people's arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands."

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security...3/0214gulf.htm

[Banana-King]

What does the US care about mass murder?

Iran-Iraq war anyone?

When Saddam gased the Kurds? In 1987... That leaves 4 years inbetween when the US invaded Iraq (not for the gasing of Kurds, but for Invading oil-rich Kuwait)

Afghanistan, thousands of Taliban soliders who were tied where killed, witnesses reported seeing US soldiers standing around and watching.

[86Dude]

Originally posted by Banana-King
What does the US care about mass murder?

Do you truly believe that we don't care about mass murder?

[Shawn]

Originally posted by Atcha
I hope they will find the "invisible" victims "buried" by the US army during the first Gulf War as well

"Daniel wondered what happened to the estimated 6,000 Iraqi defenders who had vanished. "Where are the bodies?" he finally asked the First Division's public affairs officer, an army major. "What bodies?" the major replied.

Months later, Daniel and the world would learn why the dead had eluded eyewitnesses, cameras and video footage. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them firing their weapons from first world war-style trenches, had been buried by ploughs mounted on Abrams tanks. The tanks had flanked the lines so that tons of sand from the plough spoil had funnelled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, straddling the trench line, came Bradleys pumping machine-gun bullets into Iraqi troops.

"I came through right after the lead company," said Colonel Anthony Moreno. "What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people's arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands."

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security...3/0214gulf.htm

What's your point? US Forces overran defensive positions during a combat action?

[Banana-King]

Originally posted by 86Dude


Do you truly believe that we don't care about mass murder?

You do (I am talking about the government, not the people), but not when it implicates you, and not when someone who can do a lot for you is doing it.