Iraq gives up its grim secrets

Abandoned warehouse is a tomb for hundreds of tortured and executed Iraqis From Paul Harris in Al Zubayr, Southern Iraq THE coffins are laid out in neat rows in an abandoned warehouse. In each lies a crumpled bag of bones, old and dusty but still recognisably human. Out of the open end of one sack, a skull can be seen buried in the fragments of skeleton. Its eye sockets are empty. Its teeth are smashed. Two ribs point out like accusing fingers. Something terrible happened here. Something murderous. Something evil. The proof lies in a cargo container nearby. Its metal door hangs open and inside are pages and pages of files. Each sheaf of notes contains a picture of a man or woman. Each and every one has been shot in the head. Their wounds are mangled and gaping. Many of them barely look human any more as the anonymous photographer chronicled their dead faces. It is a horror almost beyond words. It is hard not to look at the black-and-white photographs -- two for each victim -- and wince. Yet each was a brother, a father or a son; or a mother, a daughter or a sister. Each had a past and hopes for a future, yet each ended here, in this dry and dusty hall of the dead. There must be at least 200 of them in the plywood coffins, roughly hammered together by a hurried carpenter. All of them are in bags, jumbled together in sad piles of remains. 'Whoever they are, they have been desecrated in their death. No one should ever treat the dead like this,' said Sgt Simon Brain, a veteran of tours in Bosnia, who has seen places in the Balkans that look similar to this. 'That is in two countries now that I have seen mass graves,' he added with a shake of his head. There are signs of torture too. Outside the warehouse stands a wall. It is dotted in the centre with a spray of bullet holes. Nearly all of them are at head height. There is a ditch behind it. If anyone was shot against the wall, their blood would have drained cleanly away. In another warehouse, a dozen tiny concrete cells have been built of breeze blocks inside the hangar. In some of them, portraits of Saddam Hussein stare from the grey walls. In several, an iron pole has been hung from the roof. Dangling from it are cruel, rusting metal hooks. They are ideal torture chambers. 'We can't speculate on what this is until an investigation,' a British military spokesman said. But one officer, speaking privately and looking in shock at the warehouse, was more blunt. 'Just look at those photos. Look at this place. 'People were being tortured and executed here,' he said. The warehouse has now been declared off limits after being discovered by British soldiers of the Third Regiment of the Royal Horse Artillery yesterday morning. An investigation is now to be launched into exactly who lies in the coffins. War crimes investigators have been alerted to the discovery and the building sealed off and guarded. Though it is hard to imagine who would want to go inside. The warehouse lies on a sprawling and abandoned military base on the outskirts of Az Zubayr, a small town near Basra. Nobody lives nearby. It can only be reached by travelling on rough and pitted mud causeways that traverse a lunar landscape contaminated by oil leaks from nearby refineries. Multi-coloured slicks soak into the dust of the drained salt marshes as they bake in the midday sun. There is no sign of life apart from the stray dogs that swarm over this part of Iraq. The base itself is a mess. Most of the buildings have been trashed or looted and destroyed over the previous decade or so of war and sanctions. There are holes in many of the buildings and roofs missing from some of the barrack huts, yet the warehouse of bones was locked and intact. There is little doubt that the bones are at least several years old. No flesh remains on the long brown leg and arm bones or bits of rib. Only a few tufts of tough black hair lie scattered on the floor, where dogs have tugged at a few of the bags and spilled their grim contents on the unforgiving concrete. But there is no doubt the base was inhabited until only a few weeks ago. Among the buildings are Iraqi army shirts still in their bags, new gas mask respirators, signal huts for an artillery unit and maps with military drawings upon them. Yet the Iraqi soldiers who were living here were literally living beside the corpses of hundreds of people. Exactly who they were is so far a mystery. But there are a few clues. Some of the bags are made of plastic and inside them can be seen a few pieces of military equipment. The green belt of the Iraqi army is plainly visible in several of the sacks. Were they soldiers suspected of disloyalty in recent years? Were they Shia rebels from 1991, many of whom were in the army? More than 50,000 Shia were killed by the forces of Saddam Hussein in their doomed revolt. Are these some of their corpses? In most of the bags there is no trace of clothing. Just bones. In one sack a single photo lies. It is a simple ID card. On it a middle-aged man stares out. He has black hair, a long face and a drooping moustache. In life he would perhaps have looked pensive. But lying, half-covered by his own dusty remains, the man pictured within looks sad and forlorn. He looks regretful for the life stolen from him. A splotch of bloodstain on the corner of the card is reminder enough of the brutality of how all his hopes died. It is hard to stay in the warehouse long. In one corner, empty coffins are stacked four or five high. Whoever was doing this grim work was stopped before they finished their task. That is a small mercy but no respite for those already dead. Inside the hangar, the air is still and thick with dust. It hangs close around the clothes and almost makes one retch to think what is being breathed into the lungs of those who have ventured inside. It is a relief to leave such a charnel house. Outside, the sun is shining over southern Iraq. There is a stiff breeze that blows some of the bone dust away. But inside the horrors remain, testimony to the crimes of a regime that is itself now being killed. Yet these are not isolated horrors. Last night allegations of the torture and murder of dozens of children by Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party also came to light, with bodies discovered hanging from street lighting. The killings were carried out after the party headquarters in Basra was bombed last week, said some Iraqi women, one of whom's niece had been killed. Families believed to have been aiding coalition forces were targeted. Interpreter Vanessa Lough, formerly attached to the UN and based in Basra said: 'In one street alone they said three children could be seen hanging from the lamp posts, and around the corner one child lay burnt on the ground. 'The women said some of the children's bodies are now being held in the city's hospital mortuary.'

Dick Cheney didn't seem to be too concerned about Saddam Hussein's human right's violations when he sold Iraq about $70 million worth equipment to repair oil wells when he was CEO and Chairman of Halliburton.

Oh well.

Well i guess this will be the smoking gun they will use to justify this imperialist war. They are not going to find any so
called weapons of mass destuction so this is what the corporate media will say is the reason we needed to kill over one thousand Iraqie civillians.
Is it just me or does this story remind you of the so called babies being tossed from their incubators durring the first gulf war.

Everyday more information comes to light that cements my belief that this is a just war. To those that compare President Bush to Hitler, take a look at those victims stacked in a hanger. Left and forgotten by the government, but not by their families. Think of them not knowing what happened to their mother, father brother or sister. And think of some small child, who did nothing, hanging lifeless from a street light. Then, tell me how many more would have perished had the leaders of the coalision troups not done the right thing.

I am sorry for the soldiers and sailors that have died, and for those that have become innocent victims of errant bombs, but ten times, or one hundred times, that many would have died if nothing had been done.

...those coffins appear to be open and empty and rather new. Am I missing something here?

Oh, well, we interned the Japanese Americans during the War in the Pacific, I guess the Middle Eastern countries should have come over here and liberated our political prisoners, too.

Oh, yeah, where were the Americans when Ceausescu was brutalizing the Romanians. And...there is Cuba and its political prisoners just miles off our mainland. Question: Could ya think that OIL - or lack of it - might have something to do with the US overlooking other people who were in need of liberation.

We just have to stop being Big Brother. We have people sleeping in the streets here, going hungry and in need of medical care. And...we are cutting benefits to our Vets. What is WRONG with this picture?

THIS WAR IS ABOUT OIL. PERIOD - NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS.

So we are dropping bombs on them to liberate them? So, that makes it OK? The big story sold to the American public was that they had WMD and they were a threat to us. SPIN........spin......spin....

Suddenly we are now liberating them? When in the heck did we offer asylum to these political prisoners? Gee, I guess Cheney was too busy looking at the oil wells and making deals to notice what REALLY was going on. If it is so bad there and these people want to be free, then why the heck are they not welcoming us with open arms? Seems a little strange to me. Do you understand that most of these people hate us?

Look, we will find some excuse or some justification to sell this crap to ourselves and to the world - or at least try to do so. But what Bush is selling, I ain't buying.

Does the term "ulterior motive" come to mind?

SPIN....spin....spin

When I first saw the photos of the coffins and the plastic bags of human remains, I had two immediate thoughts:

1). These were remains of Iraqi Soldiers from the Iran-Iraq war.

2). The find would be used as "proof" that the Iraqi government had tortured and executed it's opponents.

Without a doubt the Iraqi regime HAS tortured and executed it's opponents... but I doubt very much that it preserves the bodies of the victims in neat rows of coffins, replete with photos.

Remember, Iraq and Iran fought a brutal 8 year war that took the lives of millions. The two countries have been working on better relations and have recently exchange the remains of MIA Soldiers. What this looks like to me is a warehouse full of deceased Soldiers returned to Iraq by Iran. Note how old the bodies appear... they are desiccated. The fact that many of the dead are not whole, but stored in bits and pieces in small plastic bags indicates that they were war casualties.

I'm NOT an apologist for the Iraqi government... but I know war propaganda when I smell it. The Bush/Blair Anglo Saxon "coalition" is desperate to find some type of damning evidence to justify their illegal war against Iraq. They are not finding any weapons of mass destruction (that WAS the original excuse used to launch the attack), so they are trying to make Iraq look like a Nazi death camp. Just a few days ago, the large amount of "white powder" the U.S. Marines found... and said "may" be chemical weapons, turned out to be nothing of the kind. I'm not falling for this "mass execution" story either.

George, Dick and Don meet with his zionist chickenhawk advisors in an office for the New World Order.

"George we gotta get in there and get this oil.", says Dick. "George we gotta get in there and set our base for a New American Century", says Dick.

"We need regime change, It's time to get rid of our former loyalist and traitor Saddam, Let's replace him with another royal subject. Preferably one with a criminal background so he's easy to bribe.", says George.

"Government Overthrow? I don't think the loyal subjects will buy that line George." says Paul. "Well let's throw that bait out there anyways and see how many bites we get.", says Dick. Well that didn't work the loyal polls say we only got 20% of the loyal opinion.

"I think the American People need a little fear, You know the motto of our zionist tribe (We rule through terror), let's scare them with threats of Weapons of Mass Destruction.", says Richard. Well the loyal polls now show we got a 35% approval, Let's make our bait a little bigger, I suggest we throw out the threat of Nuclear Weapons. "I don't know George, that's a feeble link, the Investigative services have allready proven those documents from Niger were a forgery.", says Dick. Well let's throw it out there anyways and see what we get. Well that's a little better the polls are at 48% now.

"I got it we need something to appeal to the sympathizers and religious types, let us say we are going on a mission of liberation, surely this moral high road will attract much attention.", says Don. " I don't know bombing and killing to liberate? It's hard to make the connection", says Richard. "And suppose we are not accepted by the loyal slaves of Iraq as planned.", says Paul.

"You dumbies will never get it will you", says Dick. "It doesn't matter once we're in there, we can always find justification, WoMD, oppressive tyrant, we can even fabricate something need it be, we just gotta get in there." and if democracy fails back to plan A, we put in another oppressive tyrant just as we planned in the begining and it's the Iraqi peoples fault they didn't want to accept democracy. Everything goes just how we planed it.

Hmmm what about U.S. involvement in My Lai? What about the Syphillis experiments on Blacks in this country? If were gonna starts comparing dictatorships let's start with out own...

Yay! I call Leftie Bingo!

I got "It's all about the oil"
and "imperialist"
and "Dropping bombs to liberate them"
and "Zionist"
and the free space, "What about (insert past US wrongdoing here)

What do I win? An autographed Noam Chomsky "No blood for oil" protest sign?
An ANSWER commemorative Hammer and Sickle?
Oooh! I hope it's the Grand Prize: The promise from Radical Islam that, even though i'm an infidel and will not convert to Islam, they won't kill me! Man, nobody's ever won that before!

This is from the Iran Iraq war. We initiated these coffins dumbass!

i think it's funny how many of you people think you know what the government's motives are. for the all the things i do not know; i do know this: the president is doing his best not to let another 9-11 happen. what; was he just going to do nothing and trust saddam in a new age of terrorism? i'm not into having the government push democratic values in the middle east but i don't see the majority of iraqis complaining about freedom. yes, the casualties make me ill. and stop with the cheney thing: if his company is best for the job let them in. who the f cares? they certainly aren't there because they can't do the job with the oil fields so please stop with that argument.

i don't see anyone here offering solutions about making us safe from terrorism. socialist revolution doesn't count. all of this banter will make little difference in the end so just vote him out if you can.