300,000 murders condemn tyrant

Toronto Sun ^ | December 4, 2003 | Peter Worthington

[Clive]

How many still question whether Saddam Hussein should have been deposed in Iraq?

How many still think that "weapons of mass destruction" are the only justification for the "war" and that failing to find them is reason to condemn the joint American-British attack?

How many who believe this watched 60 Minutes last Sunday?

The program had an intriguing report about Iraqis searching mass graves for relatives, and the astonishing efforts of Jim Kimsey, the retired founder of America Online, who heads something called the International Commission of Missing Persons, which identifies victims of genocide.

There are an estimated 300,000 murdered victims of Saddam Hussein.

Already some 250 mass graves have been found.

The 60 Minutes program showed bulldozers and mechanical shovels scooping out bodies, some dead for the past dozen years.

Local people scoop armfuls of bones, fragments, rotted clothing to see if they can recognize anything -- ID papers, false teeth, markings, artifacts of loved ones.

It's stomach-turning, and mute testimony of horror.

Some skulls still have blindfolds from when they were shot.

Men, women, children, the sick and infirm were herded into trenches and mowed down with machineguns, then buried.

Paved roads were put on top to hide the evidence.

This was Saddam Hussein.

Kimsey started his investigations of the dead in Bosnia, especially Srebrenica, where maybe 5,000 Muslims were massacred by Bosnian Serbs loyal to -- not Slobodan Milosevic -- but psychiatrist-poet Radovan Karadzic and his general, Ratko Mladic.

Milosevic is now on trial for war crimes, but Karadzic and Mladic are free in Bosnia.

For what it's worth, in Kosovo, where the United States, Britain, Canada and NATO went to war because then-U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright thought Serbs were committing genocide against Albanians, not one mass grave has yet been found -- not one.

Atrocities, yes, by both sides. But no genocide, no mass graves.

It was a war fought for a false cause -- not like Iraq, where Saddam's homicidal paranoia still has defenders in the West.

There are 30,000 missing in Bosnia, presumed massacred -- one-tenth the number of Iraqi victims of Saddam Hussein.

If what 60 Minutes reported about Kimsey is true, he's someone deserving of a Nobel peace prize.

Apparently DNA investigations have been mightily speeded up.

People searching for the fate of relatives donate a drop of blood, which is analyzed and computerized. Matches are made from the bones of mass graves.

Before DNA, 100 victims a year were identified. Today, it's 200 a month.

It now takes about three seconds to run through the DNA of some 43,000 Bosnians who've donated blood and determine if there's a match with the bones of a relative.

Kimsey and others now say if they get blood analyses of Iraqis, the identities of those massacred in mass graves can be determined.

That's amazing when you think of it, and had this technology existed in, say, World War I the mass graves of regiments of unknown soldiers, German and French at Verdun, would mostly have been identified and "unknown" no longer.

Apparently, confirmation of loved ones being dead, and having a proper funeral is tremendously important to people and enables closure -- if not forgiveness.

The enhanced technology also helps explain why there are those who are not anxious for mass graves to be found and victims identified.

There are those in the Balkans and Iraq who were involved in these crimes, and fear identity.

Whatever else, the crimes of Saddam Hussein are of such magnitude that the civilized world should have eliminated him years ago -- but didn't.

The UN Security Council refused to act. Only America, Britain and Australia did the right thing.

[Clive]

-

[ALASKA]

I wonder how many people would have been killed by Saddam's regime during the time since the war started had we not gone into Iraq? I bet there are more Iraqis living now than there would have been if we had not deposed the tyrant.

[concerned about politics]

There are an estimated 300,000 murdered victims of Saddam Hussein.

Clinton went to war with Yugoslavia and demanded a regime change because of massive genocide going on there. The UN has only found 2,000 bodies, and can't even tell if their serbs.

[optimistically_conservative]

Iraqi Lives Saved Counter - Algorithm

    # of Iraqis not killed by Coalition compared to estimates
+  # of Iraqis not murdered by Saddam since deposed* x # of days since 1 May 03

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
(                                                                  )

x  (birth rate per day of those saved above x # of days since 1 May 03)

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(                                                                  )

-  # of Iraqi deaths reported by www.iraqbodycount.net

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

    # of Iraqis alive because of the US-led Coalition's compassion, competence and
    love of humanity.

* incl. # of Iraqis not dying from sanctions since they were lifted

A Calculated example for Sunday, August 10, 2003:
	Minimum	Maximum
	48,000	3,900,000
+	47/day x 102 days	548/day x 102 days
	52,794	3,955,896
+	(( 34.2 per 1000 population per year x 52,794 ) / 365 days ) x 102 days	(( 34.2 per 1000 population per year x 3,955,896 ) / 365 days ) x 102 days
	53,298	3,993,703
-	7,798	6,087
	45,500	3,987,616
References: http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/Saddam_Hussein.htm http://www.cesr.org/iraq/docs/humancosts.pdf http://www.medact.org/tbx/docs/Medact%20Iraq%20report-spread.pdf http://www.ippnw.org/CollateralDamage.html http://www.geographyiq.com/countries/iz/Iraq_rankings.htm http://www.casi.org.uk/info/undocs/internal.html http://www.townhall.com/columnists/marvinolasky/mo20030408.shtml http://www.deanesmay.com/archives/000840.html http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

[Clive]

In fairness, Clinton agrees with the Iraq adventure.

[headsonpikes]

I'd like to see your post's thesis on the front page of the NYT, with weekly updates.

But I suppose they have another AlGoreRhythm in mind.

Please excuse the desperately bad pun - I couldn't stop myself!