Here is an excerpt from a Reuters article dated Tuesday, October 12, 2004:
...
The victims are believed to be minority Kurds killed during 1987-88. One trench contains only women and children, apparently killed by small arms. Another contains only men, apparently killed by automatic gunfire.
[Greg] Kehoe [a U.S. lawyer appointed by the White House to work with the Iraqi Special Tribunal] said the women and children had been taken from their villages with their belongings, including pots and pans, shot — often in the back of the head — then bulldozed into the trench.
Some of the mothers died still holding their children. One young boy still held a ball in his tiny arms. A thick stench hangs over the site, as well as at a makeshift morgue nearby.
"The youngest fetus we have was 18 to 20 fetal weeks. Tiny bones, femurs, thighbones the size of a matchstick," says investigating anthropologist P. Willey, of California.
International organizations estimate more than 300,000 people died under Saddam's 24-year rule and Iraq's Human Rights ministry has identified 40 possible mass graves countrywide.
Authorities hope careful investigations of the sites will provide enough evidence to convict Saddam and other senior members of his regime, now in U.S. detention, of crimes against humanity.
...
Did you catch that number? 300,000. THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND. That's the population of a good-sized American city. Possibly FORTY mass graves. Mothers and babies. Butchered for his pleasure. Are you eating dinner? I hope so.
How many MORE innocents would have been tortured and slaughtered if we had allowed the U.N. to continue "negotiating" with that monster? What a few of our soldiers did at Abu Graib was like tickling compared to what Saddam's henchmen committed there. Don't even talk to me about that comparison.
Freedom and security sometimes come at the ultimate price, and as far as I'm concerned, America is one of the few nations on earth that is willing to pay that price.
When the fear of reprisal among the Iraqis on the street subsides, we'll hear much more of their genuine gratitude toward America. For now, though, they still must be careful about what they say to the press.
Cultural change takes generations. It may never happen. But at least we stopped a man who played "genocide" the way we play baseball.
