and if kerry had his way, Saddam would still be in power, singing "Make Our Garden Grow!" http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/13/iraq.graves/index.html -- Mass grave unearthed in Iraq BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. forces have exhumed a mass grave site in northwestern Iraq and uncovered the remains of scores of people. Many of the bodies found at the site near al-Hatra are believed to be the bodies of Kurdish women and children thought slaughtered by the Saddam Hussein regime. A pool reporter recently was taken to the site, and the evidence gathered at the site -- a remote wadi or valley that cannot be seen by passing vehicles -- is expected to be used in the war crimes trial against Saddam Hussein and his Baathist allies. "A perfect place for execution," Greg Kehoe, the head of the Regime Crime Liaison Office and leader of the forensic excavation, said on Wednesday. "It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field," Kehoe told reporters during a visit to the site south of Mosul. "Someone used this field on significant occasions over time to take bodies up there, and to take people up there and execute them." Authorities began digging on September 1 at the site -- found a year ago by the U.S. Army. Crews have excavated two grave trenches, and officials say there could be as many as 12 in the general area. Kehoe said the bodies were apparently bulldozed into the graves. "Unlike bodies that you've seen in many mass graves -- they look like cordwood -- all lined up," he said. "That didn't happen here. These bodies were just pushed in." The first trench contains the remains of women and children, and the second contains the remains of men only. More than 100 bodies have been found from the first location and a similar number from the other. Officials say it is enough to determine a pattern for the killings. Kehoe said the victims appear to be Kurds, based on the dress and the personal belongings found. He believes they were probably killed in early 1988, though it might have happened in late 1987. Many of the victims wore multiple layers of clothing and carried small personal items like jewelry and medication. One child was found with a ball in his hand. The women -- four or five of whom were pregnant -- and children appear to have been killed with a single small caliber gunshot to the head. Some of the women were blindfolded, but Kehoe says 95 percent of the men were blindfolded and had their hands either tied to the man next to them or tied behind their back. Al-Hatra is in Nineveh province, the location of Mosul and Tal Afar. A lawyer, Kehoe also spent five years working on the Balkans War Crimes Tribunal. Kehoe said that most mass graves in Bosnia largely contain men of fighting age. Graves near Hatra included many women and children, he said. "Genocide is the attempt to eliminate, limit or exterminate a religious, ethnic, national or racial group," he said. "The Kurds are clearly a different nationality. So could it be considered genocide? It could be. Killing, ethnic cleansing, property relocations, all of those were used to try to limit the Kurdish population. What it is fundamentally is downright murder." Human rights groups believe about 300,000 people were killed during Saddam's 24-year rule, which ended when U.S.-led forces toppled his regime in 2003. Saddam is set to stand trial for crimes against humanity and other offenses next year. No trial date has been set.
A better question is "why does basso not mention how these graves originated?" The answer, unfortunately, involves the US. You see, Bush Sr. made a mistake. This betrayal resulted in a very bloody putdown of Kurdish rebels by reemerging Saddam loyalists. Now the US is using these graves as justification of the current invasion. Ironic? No. Disgusting? Yes.
the graves are from 1987-88. how do the events of '91 impact what happened four years earlier? although, i do agree we GHWB screwed up in the aftermath of GW1. we pulled our punch then, shouldn't do it now.
Which means that when we invaded, these abuses were 15 or 16 years old and occurred when we were still giving support and selling arms to Saddam. These graves (in fact, ALL of the mass graves in Iraq) do not rise to a point that would justify our invasion. In case you forgot, this war was sold to us based on WMDs, not mass graves, not starving children, and not Saddam's silencing of dissidents. This war was based on claims of WMDs and there is no way for Bush to run away from that fact, though he keeps on trying.
I missed that in the article. Sorry. Still - I disagree with you. The purpose of posting this article was, I assume, to point out human rights abuses as a reason for the Iraq invasion. This is not what Bush gave as his motivation. I think a lot more people would have questioned this war at the beginning had Bush given "we need to liberate the Iraqis from the tyranny of Saddam's rule" as his reasoning. I would feel misled. I'm glad that Hussein is gone. But all of this "Well, Iraq wasn't much of a threat to us, but look at the mass graves! Look at the torture devices!" is Monday morning quarterbacking. It's great that the Pentagon has media-savvy people that are able to invent scary-sounding nicknames (i.e., "Mrs. Anthrax") for the people that it kills or captures, but at the end of the day I would have had a lot more respect for the administration if they had just been honest about things. Hussein was a brutal dictator, but the world is full of brutal dictators, and the last time I checked, the United States wasn't drawing up plans to invade Burma or Zimbabwe.
That's right these are the fruits of John Kerry's statement from the debate, and not the fruits of the Republican president at the time, who stopped the UN from forming resolutions denouncing Iraq's human rights abuses. They certainly aren't the fruits of the Republican leadership that sold equipment, arms, supported, and gave aid to Saddam at the time these atrocities were going on. This isn't the fruit of any of that, but of John Kerry's comment in a debate a couple of weeks ago.
andy, rhadamanthus, when lincoln proffered the end of slavery as another justification for the civil war, did it render his earlier justification of saving the union moot?
Not a comparable situation. Both of the above reasons were suitable reasons for the Civil War. (This could be much debated, but I do not want to get too offtopic) However, Bush's original reasoning was faulty, so much so it rendered itself moot. Lincoln did not need to come up with another justification, it merely helped his cause (by garnering more support from Europe). Bush suddenly had to spin a new reason for the war before his supporters could turn on him for his lies. And people like you bought it without even batting an eye...
Uh, Bush Sr. did not 'go to Bagdad' because the 'international coalition' would have fallen apart. Arab governments did not want to look bad to their populations by helping the great satan throw out a 'muslim leader' and euros were already barely committed. You either misunderstand what happened or are clearly being disingenuous suggesting Bush just abandoned the Iraqis because he didn't give a crap. Hence it does impact the argument that we should only act insofar as a 'global consensus' wishes us to, as we had the opportunity to remove saddam in GW1 and didn't because of that same 'global' test.
This is true - the international coalition had a lot to do with Bush Sr's move here. I was not trying to be disingenuous and I apologize if I came off as painting Bush Sr. in the wrong light - his hands were somewhat tied: "Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in Ômission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles." Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome." --- George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998), pp. 489-90 Bush Sr. was inclined to follow this international regulation so as to not pollute the world with the notion that agression (or reaction to it) outside of international support was acceptable. It was important to Bush Sr. to not move beyond the global consensus. You are confused in asserting that this is a bad thing. If Bush jr. decided to invade Iran, do you think Europe will now jump to the front of the line? I think not. Being a superpower is all well and good - but it does not mean you have the right to tell the rest of the world what is right. Or to assume you can do no wrong.
OK, we seem to be on the same page as far as this goes. I think not. This particular example shows the failure of the 'global test' standard, as Saddam no doubt should have been removed, but the 'consensus' would not have supported it. Furthermore, later examples (post BushSr) also show the inherent limitations of such a standard (see Kosovo, Rwanda). I never advocated that we could do no wrong, so not sure where that came from, nor that we could tell the rest of the world what is right. And I'm not sure I get what you mean about Iran. Europe won't sponsor an intervention in Iran over proliferation. Simply won't happen whether or not GW is in office. If you have some reason to believe otherwise then please elaborate.
I think you did advocate (although perhaps unintentionally) that the US ignore international law, if we feel it is justified. Per your previous post, "as we had the opportunity to remove saddam in GW1 and didn't because of that same 'global' test." The comments about America doing no wrong were meant as a jab at Bush Jr., who obviously never read his dad's insightful memories regarding GW1. As for Iran, the point was that since Bush Jr. ignored the UN, don't expect the UN to be quick to help in our current quagmire or enlist in the next one. Precisely what Bush Sr. was avoiding.
This is ridiculous. Shows you how weak Bush's position is when his apologists have to stretch this far to cover it.
as you're all surely aware, i wasn't comparing the iRaq war to the civil war, merely showing that changing justifications for a war, don't necessarily change whether the war was worth fighting.
