Iraqi volunteers bury more anonymous victims of violence now than during Saddam's rule

[Roland99]

Iraqi volunteers bury more anonymous victims of violence now than during Saddam's rule
http://rawstory.com//news/2007/Baghdad_morgues_unclaimed_buried_several_to_0914.html

Every month in Iraq hundreds of victims are struck down by sectarian violence or massive bombing campaigns, and a small band of volunteers has taken it upon themselves to give the unclaimed dead a proper burial.

"We've been doing this for 20 years, under Saddam, but the numbers have increased, as have the difficulties," Sheik Jamal al-Sudani, who leads the volunteers, tells CNN correspondent Michael Ware. "Because now it is as if the streets are flowing with blood."

Before the US invasion of Iraq deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, the volunteers buried up to 40 people every month. In the war's worst months, that figure increased 50-fold as volunteers buried an average of more than 2,000 anonymous war victims, Ware reports.

As the war stretches through its fifth year, several hundred bodies remain unclaimed every month. The unidentified bodies of men, women and children are found on Iraqi streets and sewers as well as in bombing ruins; some are "so mangled and charred, they're unidentifiable," CNN says, while others are Sunni victims whose families are too fearful from their own lives to visit Iraq's Health Ministry morgue, which is controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's hard-line Shiite followers.

Good thing we got rid of that butcher, eh??

[NNN0LHI]

1. ...several hundred bodies remain unclaimed every month...

Notice Bush never mentions Saddams "mass graves" any more?

I bet I know why that is.

Don

[dailykoff]

2. Depopulating Iraq seems to be part of the NeoCon strategy

and probably also something Junior just likes to do.

[Drum]

3. If there ever comes a day

when Iraq is whole and functioning again, I hope that data on all of these deaths and displacements can really be collected and tallied...and then used to hound Bush and Cheney right into a war-crimes courtroom. THAT would be justice, at last.

[Rene]

4. This atrocity MUST be prosecuted for the protection of the world in the future.

No other administration should every be allowed to be as corrupt and power hungry as this one. These criminals(bush and cheney) must face trials at the Hague/and imprisonment. We cannot even begin to count their war crimes.....and our enablying, by our silence. This is as low as America can go.
I'm so deeply ashamed of this country's lack of outrage and futile ability to combat these neocons.

[Bluerthanblue]

5. the ultimate "liberation"-- death

we're freeing them alright.

eternally

[Roland99]

6. Wonder how many almost wish they were 'liberated'?

[Bluerthanblue]

7. far too many

i'm afraid.

And who could argue with them?

I haven't got words to express the feelings this causes


:(