Mass graves in Iraq

Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
February 5, 2008

I've been writing about the subject of mass graves in Iraq since the very first days of this blog, back when Tony Blair was making the claim that "400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves." The truth was that the actual number of bodies that were found in mass graves in Iraq after the invasion numbered in the low thousands, numbers which were dwarfed by the number of Iraqis literally buried alive in mass graves by American bulldozers during the first Gulf War, or blown to bits on the "Highway of Death" shortly thereafter.


There were mass graves in Iraq, to be sure, but the invasion and occupation of Iraq has created many, many more. We read about the latest discoveries today: a mass grave of 50 uncovered today, and 200 more in the last month. And no, these aren't mass graves left over from the Hussein era; they're fresh ones. And, lest we forget, one of the biggest mass graves of them all, whose anniversary approaches in one week - the 400 Iraqi women and children obliterated by American bombs in the Amiriyah air raid shelter on Feb. 13, 1991.