There are two types of mass graves in Iraq

[sabra]

http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news/2010-12-21/kurd.htm

Post-U.S. invasion mass grave found in Iraq’s Mosul includes corpses of small children

Iraqi troops have uncovered a mass grave where the bodies of 11 Iraqis were buried among them small children.

The victims were murdered and buried in the grave, close to a neighborhood in northern city of Mosul, said Major Iamd-el-deen Abdulkarim.

The officer said ordinary people alerted his troops about the new mass grave. “Citizens informed the army about the mass grave. The corpses uncovered are decomposed. Only one corpse could be identified. There are corpses of children as young as fresh flowers,” Abdulkarim aid.

...

There are two types of mass graves in Iraq. The first includes victims of former leader Saddam Hussein. The second includes victims of U.S.-led military operations in the years after the invasion and the subsequent upsurge in insecurity and violence.

:-(

[rfranklin]

1. Most of those people would still be alive if Saddam was still in power...

That's the irony of "the world is better off without Saddam..."

[aquart]

5. I tend to mention that.

I get back the mantra that Saddam was a cruel dictator. But nothing is as cruel as war.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

2. "Anti-US" is far more common than "US-lead".

The number of Iraqis killed by the US is in the tens of thousands, nany (I suspect "most", but I'm not certain of that) of those soldiers or militants.

The number killed by violent anti-US or anti-one-another movements is far higher (I think in the hundreds of thousands, but I may be out by a power of ten either way), nearly all civilians.

The big argument against the US invasion of Iraq is *not* the number of Iraqis actually killed by US operations - which, compared to the amount of harm Saddam had done, was probably a price worth paying - but that they stirred up a hornets nest of violent opposition which has killed immeasureably more.

[patrice]

4. +1~ for Truth.

[patrice]

6. I think one innocent death is too many, so this is a description, not an excuse.

No doubt, our guys did stuff they shouldn't have. People need to imagine being IN that insanity to have only just a little better understanding of what happened to our guys. That's not an excuse; it's a description. I'm just saying in its context, you can see the causes and why some of them FAILED to cope effectively.

First off, when you volunteer to put yourself in the military and hence to be ordered, against your own will to kill and to go into such insane situations, you are up front basing your actions on the principle "Human life is expendable", once you've crossed that line, the rest of it is only a question of whether it's your life or someone-else's and expendable-for _____________, who, or how many are more questions of circumstance than of ANYTHING else. So people should stop being surprised that our troops abused and killed some folks who didn't need it. Still not an excuse. Just a fact.

That said, I would bet that MOST of the Iraqi dead, including the children, are most probably due to Iraqis killing Iraqis. Again, not an excuse, just a fact; We ARE in THEIR country, our Iraqi supporters were a primary threat to those who oppose our presence there. The fact that they are/were killing one another is not our troops' fault. It is our "leaders'" faults. Saddam was our guy FOR A LONG TIME; we HAD to have known who/what/why/how he was to who/what/why/how the Iraqi people are. The CIA/we HAD to have known the potential for violence amongst various factions, without Saddam's powerful grip on their throats. The high Iraqi on Iraqi violence should be blamed on our Iraq Project/Project for a New American Century/Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perls. These are the people who murdered those children and they should be tried for War Crimes and put in prison.

It breaks my heart for "my" country that they are not.

[sabrina 1]

7. Death squads were organized and backed by the U.S.

In fact they were completely trained and then set loose on the Iraqi people. When complaints were made, Rumsfeld et al more or less laughed them off.

To say that it was Iraqi on Iraqi violence is only partly true. Every action taken by what the U.S. describes as the largest 'counter-terrorism' army ever, was approved of by the U.S.

Hundreds of bodies were found on a daily basis as the 'Salvodor Option' orchestrated by by Reagan-era, dirty war criminal, John Negroponte was resurrected for Iraq.

All killings in Iraq since the invasion, are the fault of the U.S. The 'Salvador Option' was considered necessary to end the insurgency against the occupation.

And we were not hiding it. When Negroponte was sent there, the NYT openly reported that he was 'considering the 'Salvador Option' for Iraq. Rumsfeld and the rest of the U.S. war criminals did nothing to stop him, in fact they fully supported it.

I hope one day, justice will be done and while I can see an attempt to rewrite history here, Iraqis and the rest of the world have not developed the same amnesia that appears to have stricken the U.S.

What is happening in South America now will hopefully happen even if it's 30 years from now, in Iraq and those responsible for the brutal slaughter in that country both from here and Iraq will be held accountable. But at least they will all go down in history as the killers that they are.

Iraq's Death Squads

OF ALL THE bloodshed in Iraq, none may be more disturbing than the campaign of torture and murder being conducted by U.S.-trained government police forces. Reports last week in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times chronicled how Iraqi Interior Ministry commando and police units have been infiltrated by two Shiite militias, which have been conducting ethnic cleansing and rounding up Sunnis suspected of supporting the insurgency. Hundreds of bodies have been appearing along roadsides and in garbage dumps, some with acid burns or with holes drilled in them. According to the searing account by Solomon Moore of the Los Angeles Times, "the Baghdad morgue reports that dozens of bodies arrive at the same time on a weekly basis, including scores of corpses with wrists bound by police handcuffs." The reports followed a raid two weeks ago by U.S. troops on a clandestine Baghdad prison run by the Interior Ministry, where some 170 men, most of them Sunni and most of them starved or tortured, were found.

How quickly we forget our own war crimes ~

[patrice]

8. +1~ for Truth.

[leveymg]

3. That would be 3 types of Iraqi victims: Saddam's; U.S.; after us

and then, whatever follows that.