An Iraqi Tragedy

‘IT is a fair bet that few of the anti-war lobby read the Telegraph, but they would do well to take a look at its front page this morning.

A place of unspeakable horror

The picture is of a mass grave near the village of Hatra in northern Iraq containing the bodies of 300 people, including blindfolded women (some with their babies in their arms) and even a boy still clutching a ball.

It is, says the paper, one of 40 mass graves that have been identified by the Iraqi government and will form part of the first forensic examination into Saddam’s murderous regime.

In itself, it may not justify the Anglo-American war – but it serves as a reminder of the sort of man Saddam Hussein was and why Tony Blair is right in refusing to apologise for his removal.

It’s a pity, therefore, that the Independent – the most stridently anti-war of the broadsheet papers – should give the story so little prominence.

Readers of the tabloid edition have to wade through 30 pages before mention is made of it, by which time they have been treated to story after story attacking the pro-war case.

The Guardian, itself resolutely against the war, is at least far more even-handed, according the evidence of Saddam’s heinous crimes front-page coverage.

It says the grave site is thought to hold the bodies of several thousand Kurds in nine separate trenches.

And Greg Kehoe, a former US federal prosecutor who spent five years working on the war crimes tribunal in the Balkans, described the dried river bed as ‘a killing field’.

‘I’ve been doing grave sites for a long time,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason.’

What is happening in Iraq now is a tragedy – and there is a very good case for saying that this is a war we should never have fought.

But let us not forget also that Iraq under Saddam was also a tragedy – a very bloody, brutal tragedy at that.’

Posted: 14th, October 2004 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink