Shock & Awe in Pictures

Assessments of the devastation vary. Last May, Human Rights Watch concluded that "as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been 'disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades." Last November 20, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "We've already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves." This scale of destruction rivals 1994's Rwandan genocide.
USAID relays the stories of three men who were left for dead, but escaped their graves, thanks to non-fatal wounds. Ali (a pseudonym) recalls being dragged from his car during a March 6, 1991 family outing. The 36-year-old was driven to the Mahawil military camp, 60 miles south of Baghdad. Among roughly 200 captives, he says he saw some, including a blind man and a five-year-old boy, shot and thrown into a trench. To speed the killing, others were burned alive on a 20-foot-wide pile of tires. Still more were forced to stand for hours in cold water, given electric shocks on their tongues, or fatally beaten with pipes. Unlike Ali, few got away.

Medical examiners, legal experts and human-rights personnel are excavating these graves meticulously, both to identify the dead and to gather evidence for the trials of Baathist henchmen for crimes against humanity. Despite the war critics' hackneyed lie that America is all alone in Iraq (perhaps those troops from 35 countries are really tin soldiers), the U.S. enjoys international help in this area. Denmark, Finland, Germany, and Sweden have provided forensic teams and material assistance.

Many Iraq-war opponents complain about Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as if it were an American Stalag for al Qaeda terrorists. These folks should remember that those who tumbled into Saddam Hussein's mass-grave program did not get there after indictments, trials, and appeals. They didn't even have lawyers. Some of those killed had rebelled against Hussein's regime or deserted the military. Most, though, were gunned down and left to rot without the dignity of coffins and tombstones, simply for being Kurdish or Shiite or standing on the wrong corner during a Baathist street sweep.

Iraq's mass graves have received some attention, but foes of Operation Iraqi Freedom prefer to discuss other things. They would rather focus on unseen weapons of mass destruction than on obvious scenes of mass death.

The liberal media appear only mildly interested in all of this. The Nexis database shows, for instance, that between January 1 and March 15, 2004, America's so-called paper of record, the New York Times, featured 191 references to Iraq and "weapons of mass destruction," but only six to Iraq and "mass graves." It's far easier to slam President Bush on Iraq while some 400,000 Iraqis who loudly would defend him, instead are busy decomposing.

Those who still believe America and its allies should have left Iraq untouched cannot avoid this conclusion: Had their arguments prevailed, Saddam Hussein's mass graves would be in business today, increasingly brimming with Baathism's voiceless victims.

By what moral standard, moreover, are the deaths of 8000 Iraqi civilians and the injury of 20,000 more a "low" level of "collateral [that is, human and innocent] damage?" By the same racist moral standard that makes a few hundred American victims (including military casualties) a fit subject for detailed reportage and somber reflection but turns tens of thousands of dead Iraqi men, women, and children (including only civilians) into faceless, forgotten road-kill on the masters' march to world domination. By the same standard that led Madeline Albright to claim that the "price" of 500,000 dead Iraqi children - killed by the aforementioned sanctions (Albright did not contest the youthful body count) - was "worth paying" to advance the noble and humanitarian objectives of America, the "indispensable nation" that "stands taller and sees farther" (Albright) than all other states.

hey dragon please for humanities sake see the situation for what it is!
look at the people being killed, our soliders , their children and their homes.
If you are upset about womens righst what about the basic right to live?
We have seized that from them, they curse us because of Rumsfeld.
You seem like someone with good moral standing, G-d Bless you! Please, its time for us to say this has to stop, i cant live with myself while this is happening and i remains silent.

Why have we not learnt anything from Vietnam?
the administration and some misguided people think that if you object to this madness you are unpatriotic thats Bull***!
Before any people have a right to be patriotic the human race has our right to our alliegance first and foremost!

This has to stop, please dont think that you are being unpatriotic on the contrary you being a humanist and true patrtiot.