More mass graves found in Iraq

Not that anyone cares....

Mass graves

Iraqis Find Graves Thought to Hold Hussein's Victims
By ROBERT F. WORTH

AGHDAD, Iraq, April 14 - Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein's government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say.

The graves, discovered over the past three months, have not yet been dug up because of the risks posed by the continuing insurgency and the lack of qualified forensic workers, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's interim human rights minister. But initial excavations have substantiated the accounts of witnesses to a number of massacres. If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Mr. Hussein's government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000 people have been found since the American invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say.............

300,000 people is a lot of people. I wonder why when mass graves are found, they don't receive that much press. Hmm.....

A report I read a few months ago stated that many of these "mass graves" excavated so far contain nowhere near the numbers that we are led to believe they do. Many also date back, and can be linked to, the Iran/Iraq war, rather than more recent massacres of civilians by Saddams henchmen.

Of course, a mass grave is a mass grave to the press and must therefore be evidence of genocide by Saddam Hussein.
This isn't an attempt to side with him in any way but you need to keep an objective and open mind when approaching anything presented by our own media and governments these days

I read the same report in which Blaid admitted he was wrong about the numbers.
I don't think there's any doubt that there are victims in the 10s of thousands buried in these graces but I'm not sure about the hundreds of thousands.

Guardian

Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.

--snip--

At the heart of the questions are the numbers so far identified in Iraq's graves. Of 270 suspected grave sites identified in the last year, 55 have now been examined, revealing, according to the best estimates that The Observer has been able to obtain, around 5,000 bodies. Forensic examination of grave sites has been hampered by lack of security in Iraq, amid widespread complaints by human rights organisations that until recently the graves have not been secured and protected.

While some sites have contained hundreds of bodies - including a series around the town of Hilla and another near the Saudi border - others have contained no more than a dozen.

--snip--

A further difficulty, according to Inforce, a group of British forensic experts in mass grave sites based at Bournemouth University who visited Iraq last year, was in the constant over-estimation of site sizes by Iraqis they met. 'Witnesses were often likely to have unrealistic ideas of the numbers of people in grave areas that they knew about,' said Jonathan Forrest.

'Local people would tell us of 10,000s of people buried at single grave sites and when we would get there they would be in multiple hundreds.'

I wonder why when mass graves are found, they don't receive that much press. Hmm.....

Because they don't get as much attention and outrage as stories about the evil American occupiers do.

It's absolutely amazing how people's blind hatred for anything American has caused half of the planet to forget what a raging blood soaked lunatic Hussein was.

,,,,, who filled those graves up is in question. The US has made a habit of killing Iraqis, innocent or otherwise.

The US is perceived as evil relative to Iraq because:

- it's flown non-stop bombing sorties ( over a quarter million) since 1991
- it's participation in the blockade of the country has lead to a massive death count
- it's techno initiatives in warfare, as oppososed to "boots on the ground", while saving our soldiers lives, has resulted in wide spread indiscriminate innocent civilian's deaths
- it's conducted an unprovoked invasion & occupation

I love America, but there is no "good" we have done in that country ever, regardless of who was president at the time.

It's absolutely amazing how people's blind hatred for anything American has caused half of the planet to forget what a raging blood soaked lunatic Hussein was.

I second that! Also I don't think Saddam should be executed. Like I said recently: "Staying alive the rest of his life knowing that the Kurds and Shiites are running Iraq is punishment enough"

it's conducted an unprovoked invasion & occupation

What!? I clearly remember hearing something about a 48 hour timelimit to leave the country. The Iraq war certainly was provoked! Remember the year long campaign by Bush to "sell" the war? Unprovoked my arse!

[edit on 4/15/2005 by verfed]

Despite the descrepancy of numbers, I suppose that these will be tallied to those already existing mass grave total numbers ranging between 300,000 and 500,000+?

Oh wait, theirs descrepancy in those total mass grave numbers, huh?
Dern....



seekerof