The Command Post - Iraq - Unearthing the Victims

April 25, 2003

Unearthing the Victims

"Do you want me to dig up everything or just the head?" the gravedigger asked. Mr. Jassim decided just to see the head, because he believed he could identify his brother by his two missing back teeth.

"There are so many graves that don't have numbers," he said. "We don't know what to do."

The dirt was dry and easily dug and soon the gravedigger held up a skull. "It's not him," Mr. Jassim said. "The teeth are complete."

At grave No. 444, a large family worked together to unearth Hamid Omran, who was 31 when he was arrested in 1994. As the family carefully lifted the bones onto fresh linen, his cousin, Farhan Jassim, 47, exploded in anger.

"I don't think there was a regime in the world that treated political prisoners the way Saddam did," he said. "You can't imagine such exaggerated injustice."

The jaw surfaced. Mr. Hussein, the cousin said, "hated every Iraqi. Believe me, he hated all Iraqis."

Then the family found the skull, which showed a crack in a temple. A guard kicked him when he was arrested, the family said.

Another cousin, Thaer Ghawi, 27, wept as he smoked a cigarette once the bones were out of the grave. "We are just people who opposed the regime," he said. "Why couldn't he just put political prisoners in prison?"

Mr. Hani, the man whose brother disappeared in 1995, spent three hours picking through the grave of his brother. It was laborious. After the teeth, a few small bones, perhaps from the feet or hands, were found. Finally, Mr. Hani had found enough to fill a small coffin. He did not find the skull.

"It is enough for me," he said as he loaded the coffin onto a truck. "I feel relieved. What worried me before was I didn't know if he was alive or dead. Now I know."

The entire story should be read.

Posted By Dean Esmay at April 25, 2003 11:32 AM | TrackBack

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That's between three and four thousand people buried by this gravedigger alone. What part of dictatorship doesn't the left *yet* understand?

Posted by: Phil Hornsey at April 25, 2003 12:04 PM

Gravedigger..... i love moster trucks!!

Posted by: Frank DeGamma at April 25, 2003 12:17 PM

Gravedigger..... i love monster trucks!!

Posted by: Frank DeGamma at April 25, 2003 12:17 PM

No war for oil!

Just kidding! :)

Posted by: Joshua Scholar at April 25, 2003 01:04 PM

dude / dudette

the left loves me - personal freedom ? no ! do the hippie / saddam / whatever dance or you will die

Posted by: brutal dictator at April 25, 2003 01:07 PM

This would be a good reason to set up the first DNA lab in Iraq.

Posted by: harm at April 25, 2003 01:50 PM

Come on, gang, you're losing sight of what really matters. This war is a failure! Some trinkets got looted from a museum! We haven't found WMD! It was all for nothing!

Posted by: T. Hartin at April 25, 2003 01:54 PM

"That's between three and four thousand people buried by this gravedigger alone. What part of dictatorship doesn't the left *yet* understand?"

How many mass graves do you think there are from when we, ok to be precise, the Republicans, were supporting Saddam? Or on the days that Rumsfeld was there giving Saddam help?

Posted by: rightie at April 25, 2003 02:00 PM

"Why couldn't he just put political prisoners in prison?"

This one statement says a lot for the long-standing mind set we will work for generations to overcome. There is no question about the presence of, or even the propriety of having political prisoners, just the treatment they should receive. Once the Iraqis, and Arabs and Persians in the region, begin to get their mind around the idea that the phrase "political prisoner" can be eliminated from their future vocabulary forever, that is when the real revolution will begin.

Posted by: Dave at April 25, 2003 02:01 PM

Where is Don? He is mighty quite on this one.

and "rightie..."

>"How many mass graves do you think there are from when we, ok to be precise, the Republicans, were supporting Saddam? Or on the days that Rumsfeld was there giving Saddam help?"

The last Republican to support him did so LONG before the mass graves appeared. (read the story and learn history)

The last 2 Republican Presidents kicked his ass.

And Clinton???? Clinton let Saddam throw inspectors out becasue he was too busy getting BJ's.

Your anger would be more effective if you had any clue of history. But as usual, the facts won't sway anyone on your side of the isle. They never do.

Posted by: Paul at April 25, 2003 02:22 PM

rightie --

Ok - so mistakes have been made in the past. But we now have the opportunity to make good. Surely even a liberal cannot be morally blind to the relief we have brought to this people.

Still - I have been predicting a liberal swing from 'No Blood For Oil' to 'Why did the US administration not act sooner' since January so your comments are not unanticipated.

Your suggestion however that the US funded Saddam has been debunked so often that I hesitate to mention that 80% of arms sales from 1973 came from Russia, France or China with less than 1% coming from the U.S.

Maybe that's 1% too much, but any foreign policy stance that you take entails some blowback - by your argument however we would not have supported the Soviets against the Nazis. Had that been the case Hitler would have nuked New York in 1946 and the whole of continental Europe would now sprekense Deutch.

I'm not taking a stance in defence of the US administration - I'm British, so American internal politics is only of ecenomic interest to me - it just strikes me that if the liberal movement has nothing more current to add to the reconstruction debate than this trite sloganism dating back over a decade then it's time to change the record or shut-the-fuck-up.

Posted by: Simon Barnett at April 25, 2003 02:38 PM

I'll learn to type soon...

Don is QUIET on this one.

quite.

Paul

Posted by: Paul at April 25, 2003 02:59 PM

Simon, good one. :)

Posted by: DSmith at April 25, 2003 03:15 PM

"The last Republican to support him did so LONG before the mass graves appeared."

Excuse me you need to learn your history, according to our own statements of people killed by Saddam military and security forces, 90% of occured in the 1980's. Are you just making stuff up? At that point we were giving them invaluable military intell, encouraging the chinese and others to supply arms, all worth more than some rpg's and bullets.

I am glad we took out Saddam, but don't make up history for some blind politcal bias.

Posted by: Gilroy at April 25, 2003 04:25 PM

"I am glad we took out Saddam, but don't make up history for some blind politcal bias. "

Political Bias. When one country, such as the US, is singled out of many countries, as somehow being a key supporter of Saddam when in fact they weren't is political bias. The fact is that during the Iran/Iraq war almost the entire industrial world backed Saddam against Revolutionary Islamist Iran- the US was just one of many, and was far from the most important. Key supporters included the Soviet Union and France who supplied most of the military aid, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait who supplied a great deal of financial aid. When one considers the amount of aid given relative to the size of GNP etc. the US's aid to Iraq is even more modest. Also, the US provided most of their aid after Iraq was on the strategic defensive and in danger of being defeated outright by Iran.

Then, there is the question about whether it was "right" to aid Saddam at the time. Well, it certainly wouldn't have been right to allow Iran to win thereby risking Islamic revolution to sweep through the Persian Gulf. The "left" doesn't seem to address this aspect of the situation.

Posted by: ziphius at April 25, 2003 05:41 PM

I wouldn't be reading too much into the statements of people as they unearth the remains of family members. Under such circumstances I'd be wishing my brother had just been imprisoned too. Because then I might have him coming home now.

Posted by: Dean Esmay at April 25, 2003 06:58 PM

Mass graves is such a loaded term. The region was beset by war and everyone including the US gave strong support to one side then the other as well. We buried our own dead and those of our enemies in "mass graves" during every whar.

Posted by: took at April 25, 2003 08:40 PM