THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

By the most modest estimates available, in the last decade or so Saddam Hussein and his two sons put to death at least 300,000 Iraqis, many in the most painful, prolonged, horrible manner imaginable.

PM admits graves claim 'untrue'
Downing Street's admission comes amid growing questions over precisely how many perished under Saddam's three decades of terror, and the location of the bodies of the dead.

The Baathist regime was responsible for massive human rights abuses and murder on a large scale - not least in well-documented campaigns including the gassing of Halabja, the al-Anfal campaign against Kurdish villages and the brutal repression of the Shia uprising - but serious questions are now emerging about the scale of Saddam Hussein's murders.

It comes amid inflation from an estimate by Human Rights Watch in May 2003 of 290,000 'missing' to the latest claims by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, that one million are missing.

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.

And while few have any doubts that Saddam's regime was responsible for serious crimes against humanity, the exact scale of those crimes has become increasingly politicised in both Washington and London as it has become clearer that the case against Iraq for retention of weapons of mass destruction has faded.

Now I suppose many of you think killing people who are not wanting Iraqis to be a free and democratic people is a terrible thing.

While people now are much better at keeping collateral damage to a minimum, nobody has yet devised any way to conduct war in which innocents are not killed.

My overriding question on all of this is and will continue to be: what would be the cost if we did not act?

Do you really believe that two wrongs make a right, Fox? All they make is two wrongs. Things were f*cked up in Iraq before we got there, and they are f*cked up now that we are there. Will they get better? Maybe. We'll just have to hope that they do. One thing is for sure; whatever we are doing over there right now, it is not working.

So far the neo-libs have circumlocuted

So my friend, what is the alternative? We just 'monitor' Saddam for another 10 years while he and his sons brutally rape, torture, and/or execute another 300,000 people or so? I see no way around that if Saddam is not taken out. Ethically, we cannot take out a government and just leave the people to starve. ......dealing with the whining and accusations and protests from the confused liberals back home.

So my friend, what is the alternative? We just 'monitor' Saddam for another 10 years while he and his sons brutally rape, torture, and/or execute another 300,000 people or so

Yes the efforts in Iraq are costly and extremely messy. In the history of the world, very few people have become free without it being costly and messy. You are probably not old enough to remember that it took five long years to accomplish nation building in Germany and Japan following WWII,

Comparing WW2 with our action in Iraq is ludicrous. WW2 was a war of necessity we were attacked. The present war in Iraq is a war of choice. President Bush's choice.

I will agree that very few people become free without it being costly and messy and I would add bloodshed and loss of life. However, the bloodshed and loss of life should be that of those fighting for liberty not ours.

Foxy
What would the cost have been if we had not attacked Iraqyou asked. Hmm. Let's see. By Jove I've got it. Zip, Zero, Zilch. As opposed to the loss of over 900 dead, many thousands maimed and wounded,The expenditure of about $150 Billion and rising, a debt that our grandchildren will still be paying down and Osama still on the loose because of the diversion of men and material siphoned off to supply the Iraq fiasco. Does that answer your question?

FACTS

#1 Prior to the 1991 War Saddam murdered tens of thousands of his own people with WMD.

#2 After the 1991 War Saddam signed the armistice ending that war.

#3 Saddam in that armistice agreement agreed to disassemble and destroy his WMD and to provide proof that he did that.

#4 Saddam failed to provide such proof.

#5 Al Qaeda murdered more than a thousand Americans.

#6 The Aghanistan invasion started 10/2001.

#7 Prior to the Iraq invasion and after the Afghanistan invasion, al Qaeda fled from Afghanistan to neighboring countries (i.e., Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, and also to Syria.

#8 The Iraq invasion started 3/2003.


PROBABLE MOTIVATIONS

#1 Saddam didn't trust them.

#2 Saddam wanted to avoid a continuation of the war.

#3 Saddam wanted to avoid a continuation of the war.

#4 Saddam disassembled the WMD and hid them for future use, expecting the UN and/or the US to do nothing more than make demands and take no action.

#5 Al Qaeda wanted to kill Americans whereever al Qaeda could find them, because the US supported Israeli independence and because thousands of Americans resided in Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries (e.g., Osama's 1998 FATWA).

#6 The US sought to better defend itself against future al Qaeda attacks.

#7 Al Qaeda terrorists wanted to live to murder and maim another day.

#8 The US sought to better defend itself against future al Qaeda attacks.

CONSEQUENCES

About 20,000 people including more than 2000 Americans have been killed (about 100 thousand people including more than 10,000 Americans have been maimed) as a consequence of:
A. Al Qaeda terrorism prior to the Iraq invasion;
B. Al Qaeda terrorism after the Iraq invasion;
C. US invasion of Aghanistan; and,
D. US invasion of Iraq.

MY ANSWER TO FOXFYRE'S QUESTION: WHAT WOULD HAVE PROBABLY HAPPENED IF THE US DID NOT INVADE IRAQ?

Saddam would have murdered tens of thousands more of his people because he didn't trust them(e.g., Review videos shown on US TV news stations of Iraqis AFTER 1991 pushing many other Iraqis off of bridges to their deaths).

Al Qaeda would have murdered and maimed more people including Americans in the US and elsewhere.

Al Qaeda would have murdered and maimed more Europeans in Europe and America.

Al Qaeda would have done these things as part of their 1996 FATWA and 1998 FATWA declared war on the "Crusaders."

Undoubtedly the neo-libs will ask for more evidence of the probable truth of my probablys.

In fairness, before the neo-libs do that, they should provide their own probablys. That will allow me, if I should want it, to ask for more evidence of the probable truth of their probablys.

Saddam trial chief faces Iraqi murder charge
Michael Howard in Baghdad and David Teather in New York
Monday August 9, 2004
The Guardian

Salem Chalabi, the man organising the trial of Saddam Hussein, was facing a murder charge himself last night after an Iraqi judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
Another was issued for his uncle Ahmed Chalabi, the founder of the Iraqi National Congress and a former key ally of the US. He is accused of money laundering.

Both men denied the accusations, which they said were politically motivated.
Iraq's senior investigative judge, Zuhair al-Maliky, said that nobody in Iraq should enjoy immunity. "They should be arrested and then questioned and then we will evaluate the evidence, and then if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial."

Ahmed Chalabi is accused of counterfeiting Iraqi dinars removed from circulation after Saddam's regime fell. The fake money was allegedly found in his house.

His spokesman, Haidar al-Moussawi, said: "Such a warrant has been issued, but no one called any of the accused or gave them a chance before issuing the arrest warrant. These are very bad indications about the state of justice and law in the new Iraq."

Both men said they would return to Iraq to face the charges.

Ahmed Chalabi, attending a conference in Tehran, called the allegations "outrageous" and "manufactured lies".

He told CNN: "I'm now mobilised on all fronts to rebuff all these charges. Nobody's above the law and I submit to the law in Iraq, despite my serious and grave reservations about this court. I have been fighting Saddam for many years and we survived that and we are certainly not going to be intimidated by this judge."

Last night Salem Chalabi described the charge against his uncle as "weird".

"It has to do with counterfeit money and I was told that when they raided his house a couple of months ago they found the equivalent of a few dollars in counterfeit dollars that he was given as head of the financial committee of the governing council," he said.

The accusation against Ahmad Chalabi is a severe embarrassment to the US, which once considered him prime candidate to replace Saddam.

Washington has attempted to distance itself from him since it was suggested that he provided faulty intelligence about Iraq's WMD capacity.

He did not get a job in the interim government.

Mr Chalabi was recently accused of informing Iran that the US had broken its secret intelligence codes. He said the allegation was "stupid".

He is wanted in Jordan, where he was sentenced in his absence in 1991 to 22 years for fraud. He denied the charge.

Since being marginalised by the US, Ahmad Chalabi has refashioned himself as a Shiite populist.

Salem Chalabi was born in Baghdad and studied at the American universities Yale, Columbia and Northwestern, where he earned degrees in law and international affairs.

He served as a legal adviser to the interim Iraqi Governing Council and was a member of the 10-member committee framing the basic transitional law for the new interim government before taking on the role as organiser of Saddam's trial.




Salem Chalabi, head of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, was named as a suspect for the murder in June of Haithem Fadhil, director general of the finance ministry.

Last night he said the allegations were designed to interfere with preparations for the trial of senior officials of the former regime.

If convicted he could face the death penalty, which was restored by the Iraqi interim government yesterday.

It was unclear last night what impact the warrant would have on the trials of Saddam and other officials of his former regime.

Salem Chalabi, who is in London, said in February he thought it could be two years before Saddam appeared in court.

The US has handed Saddam over to the Iraqis for trial.

"The warrant for me has to do with the fact that apparently I threatened somebody. I have no recollection of ever meeting that person, but apparently I threatened somebody who subsequently was killed," he told CNN.

"I don't think that I had anything to do with the charges so I'm not actually worried about it. It's a ridiculous charge, that I threatened somebody. There's no proof there."

Read between the lines, and CNN is suggesting that the outing of Khan has led to greater caution in al-Qaeda and similar groups about using electronic communications, which may make it more difficult to monitor them.

Heard on CNN today that when Saddam ruled Iraq there were well over 100 different crimes that carried a capital punishment. Think about that...