Re: Answers From The Grave

"George" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/26/60minutes/main585798.shtml
>
> CBS) While no evidence of weapons of mass destruction has yet been found
in
> Iraq, evidence of mass murder is everywhere.

False. There are evidence of death, but murder must include situational
factors that are unproven. The 375,000 estimated casualties from the
Iran/Iraq warwar undoubtably constitute the bulk of the bodies which have
been unearthed in this political 'witch hunt'.

>
> The evidence? Mass graves scattered throughout the country where families
of
> victims have been trying to find the remains of some 300,000 Iraqis who
> disappeared during the Saddam regime.

Evidence? You woyuld need a total of about 700,000 bodies to account for
such a claim as well as war casualties. The graves found so far are not
sufficient to support this contention.

> Forensic experts hope DNA samples from the graves eventually may provide
the
> clues to just who these victims were before Saddam consigned them to
> unmarked graves. Correspondent Scott Pelley reports.

Demonstrating that no actual forensic identification of identity or cause
has been made.

>
> A mass grave found after the war in al-Hilla, south of Baghdad, is a
> mountain of misery.
>
> When word got out, families swarmed over the grave. There were about 2,000
> bodies. One by one, they wrestled with the dead -- searching for
something,
> anything familiar -- a sweater that might have been his father's years
ago.
> An I.D. card -- but for which body?

Even in the U.S. there are thosands going 'missing' every year. The
assumption that everyone that is unaccounted for must have been murdered by
Saddam has been assiduously fostered by the U.S. propaganda arm. Iraqis,
predomoinantly Shiites who felt unrepresented during the Saddam reign would
naturally take such an explanation, especially when given free
transportation to the site.

>
> It was a panic that smelled of earth and death. It wasn't quite possible
to
> believe the hideous mass of it all. Some were nearly paralyzed by the
horror
> of it, and by the near certainty that the bones would never be identified.

Not true. Bones contain cells that can be used for dna comparisons to living
relatives. It will probably take a while but once enough evidence
accumulates to identify the majority as war casualties, the hysteria will
die down, and the 'tug at your heartstrings' propaganda value will
duisappear.

>
> There was only one thing the families could be sure of - if their loved
ones
> were here, they died in terror. Many of the blindfolds were still in
place.

Blindfolds were found on a small minority of graves, probably executions of
rebels from the Shhite rebellion.

>
> "I found thousand and thousands of blindfolded disfigured bodies. I found
> skeleton systems belonging to a crippled man, belonging to child, small
> skulls," says Mohammed Haider, who searched for his grandfather, Sheik
> Haider, in the al-Hilla grave last May.

All blindfolded bodies that I have seen were of adult males, likely
fighters. The deaths of women and children in the fighting would be termed
'collateral damage'. A term which seenms to sanitise the tens of thousands
of casualtues from the American "shock and awe" terror campaign.

>
> Sheik Haider was a cleric who was critical of Saddam, and in 1991, he was
> picked up by the secret police. Mohammed thought he might be able to find
> his body by searching for his grandfather's turban and clothes, and seeing
> if he could find a skull with two false teeth.

Or he emigrated as an exile to America. Hard to say with these claims and
allegations.

>
> "This is arbitrary searching, this is arbitrary exploring," says Mohammad
> Haider.
>
> "Arbitrary exploring" turned up nothing for Mohammed. His grandfather is
one
> of thousands, undiscovered or unclaimed without a prayer of being
> identified -- until now.

He is a unlikely to find the fate of a relative from randomsearches this way
as you would be looking in arlington cemetary for you long lost uncle that
you be looking in Arlington cemetary for your dear old uncle that
disappeared after being questioned by the cia for his involvement with Al
Quaeda.


>
> Jim Kimsey, the founder of AOL, landed in Iraq this summer to bring
> technology to the tragedy. Kimsey retired from AOL, and is now a sort of a
> patron millionaire of lost causes. It started back when he was an Army
> Ranger in Vietnam. He opened an orphanage that he still supports today.

Sounds like a nice guy.

>
> Two years ago, Kimsey volunteered to head something called the
International
> Commission for Missing Persons. The U.S. Government helped set it up to
> identify victims of genocide in the Balkans back in the 1990's.
>
> Is it possible that they will be able to identify the bones they've
> discovered so far?
<snip>
>
> "These are a portion of the bodies uncovered in mass graves," says Ed
> Huffine, the chief scientist on the commission.
>
> There are more than 4,000 bodies in here from just one 1995 massacre in
> Srebrenica. Kimsey's commission built a morgue and others like it, and the
> work is funded mostly by the U.S. with donations from twelve other
> countries. The morgue was originally designed to hold 800 body bags, but
> they've had to stack them up to the ceiling.

And after identification, the evidence can be assessed.

P.S. It is unclear how the ethic cleansing of the balkans (mostly committed
by serbian commanders in the field) relates to claims of Saddam Hussein
authorizing murder.

>
> "Clearly it's a grizzly scene," says Kimsey. "The people or victims here
> have been murdered and put in one gravesite and then exhumed and carried
up
> to this one."

This is getting ahead of the evidence. Execution is a term that may be more
appropriate, Until identification of body and circumstance there is nothing
to base claims of muder on.

>
> Why were they moved from one place to this?

Likely for the same reason that bodies in the U.S. are not buried where they
fall. Duuuuhhhh.

>
> "To conceal them. This, as you can tell, is a very remote place and they,
> the perpetrators, obviously were fearful that the original site would be
> found, so they brought them up here hoping that the site would not be
>  found," says Kimsey. "Some of the bodies have been burned and mutilated
to
> try and delay identification."

Why would they do so if the deaths were state sanctioned murders? More
likely they were burned and mutilated in the military action. Iran is known
to have used napalm as well as bombs.


>
> But none of that -- the burning, mutilation or time in the ground -- will
> take away the DNA. Kimsey's scientists are using DNA technology on a scale
> like the world has never seen. They grind the bones and extract the
genetic
> code that makes each victim unique. But that is only half of the puzzle.
> They still need to match the DNA from the bones to a family.
>
> The matching piece of the puzzle is in a drop of blood. Through a massive
> outreach program, families of the lost are giving blood, hoping that their
> DNA will match one of the bones. Approximately 43,000 families have
donated
> blood so far. Huffine told 60 Minutes that this vast database makes the
> impossible -- easy.

This shold work, but yiou also need to search public records to identify the
circumstances surrounding death, such as military service. It is not enough
just to determine that the persoon died. We ALL die at some point.

>
> Huffine says it takes about three to five seconds to perform a complete
> search for each victim of all 43,000 profiles in the computer.

But a lot longer for the dna analysis itself.

>
> Before, the DNA program they were identifying about 100 victims a year.
But
> now, they're identifying close to 200 a month.

So for 300,000 war dead you would need about 125 years... Talk about job
security!!

So far, the whole thing seems to be an orchestrated propaganda campaing to
create a public witch hunt of Saddam Hussein without any real evidence,
similar to the establishment of aIraqi participation in 9/11 despite
extensive evidence that they were NOT involved. This is really about a last
ditch attempt by the U.S. to create a 'post facto' "pretext" foir the war as
'global policeman'. It is likely  to fail in the same manner as prevcious
pretextrs and for the same reason. It amounts to bullshit and bafflegab,
which will lose credibility over time as facts surface.

By the way, it is off topic for both groups it is posted to. How's that for
trolling?