400,000 mass graves in Iraq not correct - 5,000 is truer number

[donsu]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1263901,00.html

Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.

-snip-

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.

-snip-

'Local people would tell us of 10,000s of people buried at single grave sites and when we would get there they would be in multiple hundreds.'
-snip-
--------------------------------


just who was that pamphlet meant for?

[DrWeird]

1. And how many in the mass graves...

were killed by the US?

[frylock]

2. What Bodies?

<snip>

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.

“I came through right after the lead company,” said Army Col. Anthony Moreno, who commanded the lead brigade during the 1st Mech’s assault. “What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people’s arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands.”

<more>

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0211/sloyan.html

[billybob537]

3. How many were killed when GHWBUSH

encouraged them to revolt. Then let Saddam shoot them.

[3trievers]

4. chris cox

repeated that 400,000 number on C-spin this morning.These guys have no shame and exhibit utter contempt for the electorate.