Mass graves (of Iraq 45k military killed by US) to reveal Iraq war toll

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1021466,00.html

Mass graves to reveal Iraq war toll

Jamie Wilson in Baghdad Tuesday August 19, 2003 The Guardian

The task of identifying thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians who died during this year's war has begun with the exhumation of a mass grave at one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces in Baghdad.
The Iraqi Red Crescent, the Islamic version of the Red Cross, which is coordinating the exhumations, said 45 bodies had been recovered since vthe palace beside the Tigris river, now used as the coalition headquarters. Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqis died in the war, but an Anglo-American research group, the Iraq Body Count, has estimated the number of civilian fatalities at between 6,000 and 7,800. The number of military casualties is between 10,000 and 45,000. <snip>

Many places where retreating Iraqi troops or arriving Americans buried the dead are known to locals, but the Red Crescent has urged people not to disturb the graves in order to avoid the destruction of identification evidence. Ali Ismael Ahmed, the Red Crescent official in charge of exhuming bodies at the presidential palace and other sites in Baghdad, thought that the biggest mass graves in Baghdad were likely to be at the airport. But the Red Crescent had not been told when, or even if, it would be allowed to start exhuming bodies from the site. Mr Ahmed said that some families were unlikely to ever get the bodies of their relatives back. "During the war the American soldiers told my volunteers not to go near the bodies in burnt-out tanks, because they would almost certainly have been attacked with depleted uranium," he said. "We never knew what the Americans did with these bodies, and we probably never will."
Another problem the Red Crescent faces is creating a comprehensive list of those who are missing. They have asked families to register missing loved ones at local offices. <snip>
Hussein Abdul Razaq, 49, a taxi driver, was one of those at the Red

The shame is overwhelming sometimes...

I had nothing to do with killing Iraqi's, "we" didn't kill anyone, GEORGE BUSH* did, be ashamed of bush* not of us. The conservatives get to attack liberals as being anti-American.

that stupid illegitimate dipwad "president" of ours ACTS ON BEHALF OF AMERICA. Because the American people ALLOWED THE ELECTION TO BE STOLEN.

...just as much as our soldiers who have died did. And this was done all for what? Because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was about to attack us at any moment. Bah!

Don

If the enemy was coming up the 101 and some local militia guy tried to put a gun in my hand, I might just fight too. Then I'd be a Bush loving Republican, by the current logic of the media and administration.

I'm very glad to hear you bring this up: there are hopes dashed and an endless sea of tear we've caused. Families are destitute, having lost their breadwinners, and it's not a particularly vibrant economy in which to pull oneself up even if one still has boots or straps on them.

I want this number, and if it's over 50K, then we've killed as many people as we lost in Vietnam. It's dehumanizing and nauseating that the only numbers most media pundits (including decidedly mixed-bags like Paul Begala, the "lefty" with the freeper sense of humor and a cavalier relationship with facts) are the 200 or so American kids we've killed thruogh our adventurism. Those were people, mostly innocents or ones defending their homeland.

What it took Saddam to do in twelve years, we can top in just months.

We better get cracking if we're going to beat his 290,000 total, per Human Rights Watch.

if so, Saddam would have had to clone himself to be competitive.

"We'd better get cracking"???
With that type of viewpoint maybe you'd better get cracking on over to a Reich wing discussion group.


-all this death in a few weeks?
caused by "civilized" amurikans
We bring peace and joy to the world don't we?
we bring HELL !!
all for oil and big corporate profits.

- The number of military casualties is between 10,000 and 45,000. plus 7,800 civilians

it's a crime against humanity--doesn't matter what you "believe" Saddam might have done.
We were told we should believe that "Saddam" was a threat with WMD and he wasn't.
They probably exagerated other things about him as well don't you think?

Whatever he did doesn't make it right to kill so many innocent people in the name of freeydumb on behalf of the citizens of the good ol U S of A.

that the war has gone on for 12 years we're looking at 150,000 to 200,000 military and around 750,000 civilians from 1991 to present.

USA! USA!

Remember, after Gulf War 1, we promised air support to the Kurdish rebels in the north and the Sunni rebels in the south if they would rise up and fight Saddam in 1992. When they listened to us and rose up, we FAILED to provide ANY air support whatsoever. We lied to them, that lie convinced them to attack a far superior force, and they were slaughtered because of our doublecross.

The blood of those Iraqi people killed by Saddam after 1991 is just as much on our hands as on Saddam's.

From:

Has Blair Sexed Up Saddam’s Atrocities, Too?
by John Laughland
The Mail on Sunday
August 6, 2003


(snip) .....Moreover, Blair is quite wrong to imply that the 300,000 figure (which in any case he has inflated a little from the actual Human Rights Watch figure of 290,000) is the number of people killed by Saddam. This is not even what Human Rights Watch claims. Their report speaks of an estimated 290,000 missing, "many of whom are believed to have been killed". In other words, their deaths have not been established, and some or all of them may still be alive.

The methods used by Human Rights Watch to calculate these numbers are questionable. They do not have anything like complete lists of the names of people missing. Nor do they even seem to know how many names are on the lists they do have. How can you claim to have reliable information about missing people if you do not even know their names?

In the past, these methods have led to appalling exaggerations of the numbers of people killed in conflict. In the Kosovo war of 1999, Human Rights Watch stated categorically that the number of people killed unlawfully by the Serbs was "certainly" more than 4,300. This was the number of bodies which had by then been exhumed. Moreover, Human Rights Watch claimed to have itself documented 3,453 killings, based on interviews. But the legal indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia, refers to 564 killed, not thousands.

(snip/...)

http://www.antiwar.com/rep/laughland18.html

that Saddam knocked off 300K during his tenure? I find that hard to believe. He was one particularly nasty character.

The US is partly to blame for many of those deaths by encouraging an uprising that the Iraqi resistance fighters never would have attempted otherwise.

troops started getting sick. Bodies that had been hit with depleted uranium? Wasn't this "hauling" done around the Baghdad Airport?

just that.

I'm sure. I'm sure the Media are terrible accomplices to this for not asking for the military data on this. Everyone knows our military has documented it but everyone is pretending it doesn't exist.

Immoral sinful GOP leadership.

From his remarks on the UN bombing:

Iraqi people face a challenge, and they face a choice. The terrorists want to return to the days of torture chambers and mass graves. The Iraqis who want peace and freedom must reject them and fight terror. And the United States and many in the world will be there to help them.

Help them? Help them?

Bush will help them, alright. He'll help them right into more mass graves.

I heard that and couldn't believe he uttered that.
Enough dead already there tough guy. Between Saddam and the gulf wars, the poor god forsaken country will be lucky to come out with anyone left.

As soon as the first bomb dropped, he was a war criminal. Today more people die, it just adds to his crimes.

I am aware of a charge of alleged barbarism in afghanistan as reported by Democracy Now concerning contained and disarmed afghani prisoners that were than massacred outright 6,000 I believe was the number. That is the claim being made. However this is a bit startling.

This is a wide spread on the numbers regarding the military casualties. It seems they are still estimating. Do we have cross references to this article? With only 45 bodies said to be recovered where are they getting this wide spread on the number. They see the bodies but recovered means of the numbers seen only 45 have been identified?

Since when has the US massacred prisoners with regularity? Or is this the result of the bombings when we first went in. This is highly disturbing. What is the US doing just throwing the carnage in the back of a truck and dropping the bodies into the wholes in the ground.

I understand these are enemy soldiers but this is not regulation is it? You bomb and then bury the dead in the ground with no regard for their families. Is this the usual procedure? We need a cross reference on this article because I can not get the scenario straight in my mind. Dead enemy soldiers are just thrown into the ground?

These are fresh mass graves? not ones found from Saddam Hussein days. I know this crew we have in office now are fucked up but this is a bit startingly for someone with no military background. How are dead enemies usually dealt with? This really does demonstrate a very disturbing disregard for this culture as a whole.

If this is true, well no wonder the Pentagon is messing with the journalists and trying to regulate the media there. No wonder the resistance there seems to have truly strategized their targets and have succeeded in make such a blow to the infrastructure there. This is very bad. The pentagon seems to be acting as if there is no tomorrow. As if they know there will be no repercussions to have to answer for this.

we definitely need a cross reference on this article. I am a bit stunned by it.

Can anyone in the know answer QS's questions? I have the same one's...What's geneva say about this? This article is in the Guardian, so I trust that it's probably fairly accurate...We've been dumping en masse thousands of dead Iraqi soldiers (theoretically, they could be ANYBODY, NOT JUST SOLDIERS!!!) into pits? WTF????

that at least a dozen Iraqis were killed each day since the bombing stopped. The deaths were from gang wars, looters and US military. If this story is correct, the number dead would be close to l5,000. Maybe this story and the BBC story are related.

Americans better hope revenge doesn't hit american soil. That is all I have to say on this. This is wrong.

yes, you generally just bury them on the spot as quickly as possible. I'm not aware of any wars where this hasn't been the case. The danger of disease spreading is just too high. If you think that an Iraqi family member is just going to appear magically on the battlefield you're not putting much thought into it. In any case Muslims are supposed to be buried by sundown (in theory) so it won't do you much good to leave the bodies laying around waiting on family which ain't gonna show.

The SOP is to check for ID, usually bury it with the soldier in his breast pocket. If time allows you take note of identities along with the map coordinates of the grave. When I was there we didn't have all of the electronic stuff the guys have nowadays. I'm sure they put together some kind of database to track gravesites. All we could do is take notes and pass them on in written form. Not particularly efficient.

There aren't nearly enough GREG units in the ARMY to provide morgue service for enemy dead (at least not at the rate which we produce them). There never will be either, just ain't gonna happen. And we have more GREG units than any other military on the face of the Earth.

By the way, the word "hole" does not have a "w" in it.

It is an action that speaks volumes. I will disregard it, as it seems I might be talking to a "perfect" person. That is never a good sign either. Of course hole does not have a w. When one points out the obvious, that's another bad sign.

Putting that aside, than the only point of the article is to point out the large number of fatalities both civilian and military, rather than there being any real moral issue that might deserve special attention. Of course that is debatable. Each reader will draw an assessment based on their politics and the great esteem they may or may not have for this particular war effort.

not that this means anything. It is from the Associated Press. Who have always had conservative number in comparison to the IBC anyway. I do not know about military casualties.

Iraqi Red Crescent Society has started exhuming casualties of war near Saddam palaces
By Associated Press, 8/18/2003 09:43

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) Digging has started among the ruins of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces for casualties of the war, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society said Monday.

The nationwide campaign, which includes the participation of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Iraqi legal and medical institutes, began earlier this month, said Qusai Ali al Mafraji, of the Iraqi Red Crescent.

snip


< Send this story to a friend | Most e-mailed articles | Easy-print version >

Iraqi Red Crescent Society has started exhuming casualties of war near Saddam palaces
By Associated Press, 8/18/2003 09:43

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) Digging has started among the ruins of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces for casualties of the war, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society said Monday.

The nationwide campaign, which includes the participation of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Iraqi legal and medical institutes, began earlier this month, said Qusai Ali al Mafraji, of the Iraqi Red Crescent.

''The whole campaign is about looking for the bodies of victims of the war,'' al Mafraji said. He said it was difficult to estimate how many Iraqis died during the war that toppled Saddam's regime.

So far, the remains of as many as 45 people, most in military uniform, have been recovered, al Mafraji said. ''But in some cases there have been civilian casualties,'' he said. He could not say whether women and children were included.

The first place exhumations began was at the Republican Palace in downtown Baghdad, which is now the headquarters for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.

snip

The only major nationwide study was done by The Associated Press in May and June. Based on the records of about half of Iraq's hospitals, it documented 3,240 deaths between March 20 and April 20, but reported that the real number is sure to be significantly higher.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/230/world/Iraqi_Red_Crescent_Society_has%3A.shtml

VARIOUS BACK ARTICLES

http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6256306%255E25778,00.html


Pictorials Military and civilians (warning graphic)

http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/iraqi-military.htm
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/civilians.htm

HERE IS US DATA ON US CASUALTIES VARIOUS WARS
http://www.dior.whs.mil/mmid/casualty/castop.htm

Well I will tell you what, between the graphics in Jerusalem on the news tonight, the numerous pictures I have seen of young Palestinian children with bullets to the head, the PBS vids yesterday on Dana, the UN this morning -- This thread I really did not need tonight.

A constant fight for a low number for the 6 o'clock news.

Now we have combat deaths since May 1 US only

And mass graves - the ones we filled - if mentioned at all - will be "exhumed since Aug 20th - near Baghdad".

We already have "Iraqi military dead near Baghdad between April 25 and May 1" - at "a couple of thousand - but really unknown"

And we Have Bush/Rummy's "we do not do body counts" - as if that was the problem with the VietNam War - and our media lets them get away with it!

Our not controlled by the GOP RW media - they just act like they are.

by the time that palestinianchronical article hit with the statement from Dana's brother I could not absorb any more of the images or the information. I did run a check to cross reference Dana's brothers statement about US troops burying thier own. Of course nothing came up. Not a word was spoken the churchbells all were broken...

and the three men I admire most the father son and the holy ghost they caught the last train for the coast the day the music died. and we were singing bye bye Miss American Pie drove the chevey to the levee but the levee was dry and "good ole boys" were drinking whiskey and rye singing this will be the day that I die. (don mclean)

I don't know. I can believe anything at this point. Even what Dana's brother stated. I will follow it up.

There were "soldiers" in Iraq in their early teens.

Blown to bits from the air before they could even surrender.

Nice.

Are you suggesting our soldiers are responsible for the fact that Saddam conscripted teenagers? Or maybe you're suggesting our soldiers should be able to ID underage soldiers in a tactical setting? What is your point?

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14633

It wasn't until late in the afternoon of Feb. 25 that the press pool was permitted to see where the attack occurred. There were groups of Iraqi prisoners. About 2,000 had surrendered. But there were no bodies, no stench of feces that hovers on a battlefield, no blood stains, no bits of human beings. "You get a little firefight in Vietnam and the bodies would be stacked up like cordwood," Daniel said. Finally, Daniel found the Division public affairs officer, an Army major.


"Where the hell are all the bodies?" Daniel said.


"What bodies?" the officer replied.


Daniel and the rest of the world would not find out until months later why the dead had vanished. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them alive and firing their weapons from World War I-style trenches, were buried by plows mounted on Abrams main battle tanks. The Abrams flanked the trench lines so that tons of sand from the plow spoil funneled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, actually straddling the trench line, came M2 Bradleys pumping 7.62mm machine gun bullets into the Iraqi troops.


(sorry about posting in multiple threads, but the original one where i posted this information has now sunk into obscurity).

M1's have mine plows which aren't much good for moving sand. Typically when we came upon slit trenchs and encountered enemy fire we hit them with everything we had (crew served weapons). Then we hit the front of the position with line charges to clear as many mines as we could. Then, depending on time constraints, we'd plow whatever resistance remained with ACEs and CEVs. And yes we continued shooting (not just Bradleys) until the Iraqis stopped shooting back.

Also, armored vehicles may be impervious to small-arms fire but they are certainly not impervious to mines, RPGs, and other anti-tank weapons (which the Iraqis had in abundance). I guarantee you the guys in those vehicles were scared shitless and you would be too.

Keep in mind many of these battles happened at night and despite our advantage with NVGs you still really couldn't see shit in the desert night. There were also occasions when we plowed under bunkers (or capped them with shaped charges) during the daytime. Each and every time we used our translators to attempt a surrender. Of course the poor conscripts in those bunkers had some of Saddam's finest RG representatives on hand to see to it that they didn't surrender. The very last thing we requested before plowing those bunkers was that they shoot the RG guys and then surrender. Nobody ever had the stones to do it I guess and, in any case, we sure as hell weren't going to leave them there to pop up out of their holes as soon as we passed by. Something about getting shot in the back is not all that appealing.

Anyway, your article makes it sound as if we were simply engaged in wanton slaughter. The Iraqis were very well armed and we fought the way we had to fight in order to survive.

It's nice to hear 1st hand accounts as opposed to the usual conjecture. I can't imagine the hell you went through. God bless you.

You should not have been their in the first place.

He invaded another country. We had not only the support of the entire UN, we even had the French on our side.

And it's "there", not "their". Sorry but I'm really picky about spelling.

BTW - it's "support."

On edit: I see you corrected your own typo (suzpport). However, you forgot the comma after "Sorry."

Some are really picky about punctuation.

Next time you may wish to cut some slack to your fellow DUers.

Things happen when you are typing fast.

Now here I am hanging on the wall with a rusty nail through my tender parts. How am I ever gonna get down?

Seriously though, I hate it when people make 8th grade spelling errors on what should be an intelligent forum.

one of the more intelligent posters. your information is not as telling as your arrogance. your pickiness with and correction of the spelling of others will not guarantee they will fall in line with your opinions, nor is it necessarily indicative of intelligence. at ease soldier;-).

yes my use of all lower case letters is a conscious choice on my part.

and don't you ever "at ease" me.

while spelling correction can come in handy, there is a matter of haste and typo's. those picky about spelling can come off as arrogant to fellow DUer's especially when their own spelling falters.

btw - not using a capital letter at the start of each sentence was a conscious choice on my part.

I don't like war but I do think defending another country against unprevoked aggression is a good thing.

That being said how can you speak for what went on over there this time? Attitudes are a lot different know. Our government encourages a hostile attitude towards other countries especially Muslim nations. Add that our leaders knowingly mislead our soldiers into thinkig Iraq was behind 9-11 and it is safe to say the people fighting this war felt it was far more personal than you did during your service.

I believe that is how it went down.

Granted screwing up oil contracts must never be allowed - and Saddam was/is evil - but the moral justification for the Gulf 1 adventure was oil contract breaking

Beyond that taking down Saddam's war machine was a good - and our military did a great job.

But I would not put "liberation" down as reason number one for Gulf war.

That war was built on just as many lies as the most recent one.

When Saddam put troops on the border of Kuwait the US held a press conference to say: "The US has no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait." In other words: "Hey buddy, it's cool with us - go for it."

The US had been working before that to provoke Iraq into invading Kuwait anyway. Encouraging Kuwait to: violate OPEC oil production agreements, extract excessive amounts of oil from pools shared with Iraq, demand repayment of loans it made to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and break negotiations with Iraq over these disputes.

A few months before Iraq's build up of troops Kuwait was exceeding their oil production limit by 20%, which cut Iraq’s income by 1/4 – at a time when they desperately needed money (they were still in the hole $40,000,000,000 from the war they just fought)


8 days after we tell Saddam it's cool to invade, he invades.

The US does a 180 - now all of the sudden we have to protect Kuwait.

The US gained Saudi support by showing them satellite pictures convincing them that Saddam had troops on their border - Those turned out to be fake - oops

Do I even need to mention the BS about "Babies ripped off of incubators and thrown to the floor"?

Bush refused to allow negotiations for a peaceful withdrawal from Kuwait - instead Bush bribed, lied, and Bullied his way into getting UN approval. Promising aid to certain countries, threatening to cut aid to others (ask Yemen what happened when they voted no). Bush did everything he could to ensure that there would be a war.

The reasons for that war were just as full of shit as the reasons for this last one.

to 'defend' those trenches?

that's what i heard he did, from pro-war/military apologist types (it was just another of the many examples of what a monster saddam was).

now you say these were well armed fighters who posed a extreme danger to the greatest fighting force ever assembled on earth?

both of these versions cannot be true - when the lies add up, it's difficult to keep the propaganda straight!

on edit: please note that i'm not accusing you of lying - the post was more of general rant about the whole situation.

You act as if the two are mutually exclusive. Certainly Saddam conscripted teenagers and other less-than-capable men to fight at the front. His Army was always a mix of soldiers with varying degrees of capability.

But it's not as if they were ALL scared 14 year olds or ALL battle-hardened veterans. That assumption is silly on the face of it.

Was it a lopsided war? Yes. Was it murder? No way. Any one of us could have bought it.

since you're on a roll,

please continue and justify the 'highway of death' massacre of defeated, retreating iraqi's:





http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/iraqgenocide/HighwayofDeath.html

On a 60-mile stretch of road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq, a convoy of more than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were fleeing. These were people who were putting up no resistance, many with no weapons, leaving in cars, trucks, carts, and on foot. The American armed forces bombed one end of the main highway from Kuwait City to Basra, sealing it off and then bombed the other end of the highway, sealing it off. They positioned mechanized artillery units on the hill overlooking the area and then, both from the air and the land, massacred every living thing on the road. Fighter bombers, helicopter gunships, and armored battalions poured merciless firepower on those trapped in the traffic jams, backed up as much as 20 miles. One U.S. pilot reportedly said, "It was like shooting fish in a barrel." That fateful stretch of road has since been dubbed the "Highway of Death."

http://www.cornerstonemag.com/pages/show_page.asp?7


shooting fish in a barrel? terrifying indeed!

great story, thanks for posting that link. i've bookmarked it.

mow 'em down and shovel 'em under.....*shaking my head* i'm speechless...