Mass Graves & Rape rooms in Iraq
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Contents |
The Urban Legend
Tale: The underlying message of neocons when discussing Saddan's evil deeds is that Bush's Iraq war is justified due to humanitarian reasons
Status: False - Evil deeds happened but DO NOT justify the destruction caused by Bush's war
One line rebuttal: The war killed more than Saddam did in the last 10 years. The same can be said for rape: It increased after the war
Snopes: N/A
Investigation: The tale builds on the 1988 "Anfal" Massacre of Kurds and the Shia massacre on 1991 shortly after the first Gulf War. This is the period that all but 50,000 of Saddam's alleged 400,000 victims were killed. Therefore Bush's war killed more than Saddam did in the last 10 years. The same can be said for rape: It increased after the war. While returning the remains of a loved one to their families is per se a laudable act, it doesn't really justify killing 1,000 more to do it, let alone killing tens of thousands and destroying the homes and livelihoods of millions. Not surprisingly, the Human Rights Watch report of 2004 was titled War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention. See The 2003 Iraq war is justifiable based on humanitarian concerns for a summary of all the reasons that make that claim a false claim
Saddam's Mass Graves
The tale builds on the 1988 "Anfal" Massacre of Kurds and the Shia massacre on 1991 shortly after the first Gulf War. As we can see in Kurdishi-Iraqi director Jano Rosebiani's movie and in this USAID report on Iraq's mass graves there were indeed an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 victims of Saddam's regime, and 270 mass graves have been reported although only 53 have been dug out so far. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies.. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies. tells us the USAID report. Based on preliminary findings, British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared in November 2004 that We've already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves
But as even Bush's war advocate and Kurdishi-Iraqi movie director Jano Rosebiani admits, The crimes against the Kurds have been committed ever since the inception of the State of Iraq in 1921, said Rosebiani in an interview. Saddam's mass burials began in the early 80s, explained Rosebiani, then escalated during the Anfal genocide of the Kurds in 1987-88. The genocide alone cost 182,000 lives. Saddam then attacked the Shia Arabs in the south following the (first) Gulf War (in 1991)
Cold hearted math: Was it worth it ?
If one feels inclined to do some cold hearted math, we can see on Saddam the Mass Murderer that at best Bush 's war killed the equivalent of 5 years under Saddam's rule and at worst Bush could have left Saddam in power for 10 years and still kill less people than his 2003 war did to date. The numbers simply don't add up to the claim that the Iraq war was waged on humanitarian reasons. This alone proves that the neocon claim that The 2003 Iraq war is justifiable based on humanitarian concerns is pure bunk (See link for more reasons why the claim is not truthfull)
Rape Rooms: Worse than slave trade ?
As we learn on a recent HRW report, after the war young women fear leaving their houses since thousands are being raped and/ or abducted in plain sight. The abductions are supposedly to sell the women to the slave trade, a poorly kept secret where women are bought and sold all over the Middle East. To make matters worse there are even a few incidents of rape being perpetrated by US troops in the US run prisons. Report: [http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0703/iraq0703.pdf Climate of Fear Sexual Violence and Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad (pdf)]
Rape: More frequent, Trafficking fears
As the BBC reports Sexual attacks have increased in Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a new report. Human Rights Watch says the fear of sexual violence is such that many women in Baghdad are too scared to leave their homes, even to attend school or go to work.
HRW researchers say there has undoubtedly been a rise in the number of rapes in the city since the end of the war
'"I spoke to one woman who was 23 years old. She had been snatched from the street while walking with her mother and sisters," said HRW researcher Johanna Bjorken, who visited Baghdad to investigate. "She was held overnight and raped. "I talked to another girl who was 15 years old. She had been taken with two sisters to a house outside of Baghdad where she was kept for about a month before she escaped. She believes the reason she was kept was to be sold, to be trafficked
Pity the women of Iraq
MARK COLVIN reports: Under Saddam Hussein's regime, rape was used, and officially sanctioned, as a weapon of torture and political repression. Now Saddam is gone, but the number of reported rapes appears to be rising.
It's not the security forces perpetrating it any more, but the post-war lawlessness, particularly in the capital, is bringing new problems, and they affect women especially badly
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: As fighting waned in April, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, tried to play down fears about the lawlessness in Iraq, saying simply that freedom is untidy.
DONALD RUMSFELD: I picked up a newspaper today, and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest, and it just was Henny Penny, the sky is falling, I've never seen anything like it, and here is a country that's being liberated.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Sexual assault, rape and the reported trafficking of women are the new hidden crime, part of life for women in a liberated Iraq.. (HRW) Middle East director Hanny Megally says the evidence leads him to believe it is worse than before the war.
HANNY MEGALLY: A girl who was.. on her way to school and was abducted.. taken away by a gang.. raped for several days and then taken back and released to places where girls have been taken, and so far nobody knows what's happened to them... A girl who was playing outside her house on the staircase at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a few men approached her, knocked her on the head and carried her off in a van.
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