News and Commentary on Politics, Media and Culture

Update: Bump to Top Due to Importance of Topic
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I have informed the LA Times that their article on Saddam Hussein’s Mass Graves in Iraq is listed under the “entertainment news” section of the paper. This is an obvious mistake so I am not going to make a big deal of the erroneous categorization.

However the story must be told because it puts a much needed context on Saddam Hussein’s acts of evil and his capabilities; both of which have been ignored and underreported by the left. Thus you don’t see them as front page headlines.

The homogenized version of Saddam Hussein is one of a hapless dictator who went out of his way to create a secular society where violence was under control thanks to the watchful eye of the United Nations.

The true version, the one the left doesn’t talk about, is of a murdering butcher who provided safe haven to terrorists and filled mass graves all under the watchful eye of the United Nations.

BAGHDAD — Perhaps they were so terrified they didn’t trust the officers who demanded their identification cards and they hid the cards beneath layers of clothes.

Or maybe they sensed their horrible fate and decided against giving up the last legal proof of their lives before gunshots turned them into anonymous corpses to be devoured by the desert.

These two paragraphs alone are a mere footnote in Saddam Hussein’s crimes against humanity. The sick and sad realization is that he was no different than Hitler or Stalin in terms of evil intentions and tactical prosecution.

Saddam Hussein trucked his knowing victims into his death camps. They may have not been the same trains as what led to Auschwitz or the soviet Gulags that Dick Durbin equated with Guantanamo Bay but the end result was the same. His victims were bussed to execution camps at the hands of a murderous regime.

The victims went out of their way to leave clues of their identity as a message to whoever unearthed the horrific crimes against humanity.

They had hidden them in secret pockets or sewn them in secret areas, especially the women,” said Michael “Sonny” Trimble, a forensic archeologist who oversees a team exhuming and examining mass graves linked to the former regime, including from the 1988 Anfal campaign, in which Kurdish villagers were deported from their homes and later executed.

“They were coming from the north,” said Trimble, who is attached to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “They were told they were being resettled. But they knew.”

Those on the left who have been criticizing the United States for disbanding Hussein’s police and elite Republican Guard should think real hard about what they were suggesting. Their argument was that we should put the guns back into the hands of the people who filled mass graves so they could help provide a stabilizing force in Iraq.

Since starting operations in August 2004, Trimble has unearthed and dissected six mass grave sites in northwestern and southern Iraq. In all, the bodies of about 335 of the tens of thousands of victims believed to be buried in mass graves have been unearthed and analyzed

This is just a dent in the estimated two million plus victims of Saddam Hussein. Yet the left has the audacity to criticize the Bush administration with arguments based on a thinly conjured up moral equivalency ruse.

“Many of the largest mass grave sites have been damaged by relatives searching for loved ones, he said. Getting a total count of victims might take decades.”

The victims were buried in graves that were not meant to be found. Worse, the victims, men, women and children knew they would never return even though Saddam Hussein pretended to be relocating them right up until the time they were tortured and shot. (This is real torture, not the underwear on the head sort).

Before they were loaded onto trucks and buses, the female victims of the Anfal, allegedly told they were being relocated, were believed to have been given a bit of time to gather up their belongings and put on multiple layers of clothing. Many accounts of the Anfal campaign have stated that security forces seized the victims’ IDs before killing them.

At the end of the day we have two distinctly opposite points of view in America. The left views Saddam Hussein as a controllable bad guy who had mended his ways and submitted to the UN Sanctions that were meant to keep him in line.

The right shares an entirely different view of Saddam Hussein as a madman who went out of his way to deceive and bribe the guards at the gate. They believe he was waiting to ally himself with our enemies, harbor terrorists at his whim and threaten the world with a resurgent Iraq that would be identified as a force to be reckoned with; or else.

The problem is that only one side can be right. I’ll take my chances with President Bush.

Others Blogging on Bad News for the LEft’s Message on Iraq
Protein Wisdon: I’m sure this is bad news, but I confess that I can’t find the “bad” part straightaway….

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