US Occupation Steals Iraqi Childhood

The UNDP said Iraqi children are paying the silent cost of occupation.

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Prosthetic Clinics

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It appears to me that Iraqi childhood was stolen a long time before the US ever showed up...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3738368.stm

Babies found in Iraqi mass grave

A mass grave being excavated in a north Iraqi village has yielded evidence that Iraqi forces executed women and children under Saddam Hussein.

US-led investigators have located nine trenches in Hatra containing hundreds of bodies believed to be Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s.

The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said.

They are seeking evidence to try Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity.

It is believed to be the first time investigators working for the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) have conducted a full scientific exhumation of a mass grave.

"It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field," Greg Kehoe, an American working with the IST, told reporters in Hatra, south of the city of Mosul.

"Someone used this field on significant occasions over time to take bodies up there, and to take people up there and execute them."

Tiny bones

The victims are believed to be Kurds killed in 1987-88, their bodies bulldozed into the graves after being summarily shot dead.

One trench contains only women and children while another contains only men.

The body of one woman was found still clutching a baby. The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face.

"The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 foetal weeks," said US investigating anthropologist P Willey.

"Tiny bones, femurs - thighbones the size of a matchstick."

Mr Kehoe investigated mass graves in the Balkans for five years but those burials mainly involved men of fighting age and the Iraqi finds were quite different, he said.

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

Long search

Mr Kehoe said that work to uncover graves around Iraq, where about 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam Hussein's regime, was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part.

The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death.

"We're trying to meet international standards that have been accepted by courts throughout the world," he added.

"We're putting a package together on each body removed - pictures of bones, clothes, a forensic report."

Iraq's human rights ministry has reportedly identified 40 possible mass graves across the country.

The dig at Hatra, where a makeshift morgue has been erected, was due to be completed on Wednesday.

aslaam alykum,

astugfirullah, how dare they, dirty kuffar.

wa alkyum aslaam

These people are sick.

Humans Rights Watch has an extreme anti-American biased.

So does Islam Online.

They spin everything.

Saddam was a bad guy and I am sureeveryone including the Lord Almighty knows it.Iraqis needed to be freed from saddam?Yes but not from their bodies.

It would be impossible to remove Saddam without the use of force.

The US gave Saddam a time table to accept exile in Libya and avoid the need for war, yet he refused.

The Iraqi people to this day continue to suffer, but their future is brighter now than it has been for some time.

"Occasionally, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots."
-Thomas Jefferson

My heart goes out to that child. It also goes out to the many hundreds of Iraqi victims from landmines left over from the Iraq/Iran war. But hey, I don't mind you posting about the evil of the US invasion as long as it's balanced. The latter I feel has not been.......

Iraq’s landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) problem is a consequence of four decades of internal conflict, the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran War,

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imaad_udeen said:

It appears to me that Iraqi childhood was stolen a long time before the US ever showed up...

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,

Is it me or are you attemptin' to justify the atrocities commited by the US government again? We all condemn the brutal massacres and inhumane actions of Saddam, no doubt. However, the problem is, akhee, that everytime the atrocities of the US are mentioned, you swiftly shout that it was 'Saddam' first!

Two wrongs do not make a right. Remember that. Furthermore, the article didn't even discuss the sanctions that cost Iraq, lives of more than 500,000 children.

Humans Rights Watch has an extreme anti-American biased.

So does Islam Online.

They spin everything.

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HRW anti-american? Islamonline anti-american? Is it because they fairly report the crimes commited by the US which brands them as anti-american.

If you're going to declare such accusation, at least provide link relating to these two sources and how they spinned the facts to suit their anti-american agenda.

IslamOnline is a universally acceptable, and well-balanced source.

kadafi said:

,

Is it me or are you attemptin' to justify the atrocities commited by the US government again?

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The United States 'atrocities" pale in comparison to other acts by current and former governments.

The US atrocities include taking pictures of naked Iraqis and making them do sexually suggestive stuff. Terrible, for sure. But I wouldn't go so far to call it an "atrocity" to the level implied here.

Abu Ghraib is no Auschwitz. Camp Delta is no Treblinka.

The US liberated Iraq and is working to rebuild the infastructure. The US has, for the first time, allowed Iraqis and Afghans the freedom to chose their own future.

Show me an atrocity committed under policy of the US government, not isolated events of a couple soldiers getting carried away with themselves.

Show me mass graves filled with hundreds of murdered Iraqi children who died, not as unfortunate victims of a war, but because of their race or religious background.

We all condemn the brutal massacres and inhumane actions of Saddam, no doubt. However, the problem is, akhee, that everytime the atrocities of the US are mentioned, you swiftly shout that it was 'Saddam' first!

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Because we liberated the Iraqis. I didn't see any other Muslim nations stepping up to the plate and delivering the Iraqi Muslims from his evil. Americans put their lives on the line to liberate the Iraqis.

The Arabs didn't come until Saddam was gone, and even then all they did was murder more innocent Iraqis. It's hypocrisy.

Two wrongs do not make a right. Remember that. Furthermore, the article didn't even discuss the sanctions that cost Iraq, lives of more than 500,000 children.

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This has already been discussed. Saddam was allowed to sell oil to buy food and medicine, but he, of course, cheated his own people so he could continue to live fat.

Sanctions never would have been in place had Saddam Hussein never invaded Kuwait (where he also murdered hundreds or Kuwaiti Muslims).

HRW anti-american?

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Yes.

Islamonline anti-american? Is it because they fairly report the crimes commited by the US which brands them as anti-american.

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It is because there is no objective reporting. It's rank in its bias. The crimes that need to be reported in Iraq is the crime being committed by "Mujahideen" against innocent people in Iraq.

If you're going to declare such accusation, at least provide link relating to these two sources and how they spinned the facts to suit their anti-american agenda.

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Just go to their websites and read for yourself. It's not hard to find, if you yourself were not already biased.

imaad_udeen, before today i always thought you were the American muslim who loves his country further more due to 11th September - who i couldn't fully understand. However because of the attacks on my own country today, I am down and sad, but I fully understand where you are coming from. Anywho back to the topic, yeh Saddam was pretty sick, but did/do you support the invasion of Iraq?

minaz said:

imaad_udeen, before today i always thought you were the American muslim who loves his country further more due to 11th September - who i couldn't fully understand. However because of the attacks on my own country today, I am down and sad, but I fully understand where you are coming from. Anywho back to the topic, yeh Saddam was pretty sick, but did/do you support the invasion of Iraq?

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Thank you. I am deeply troubled and sorry for you and your fellow Brits. Hopefully that will be all the death that occurs from whoever did it.

Good question.

Back in those days I had not yet a become a Muslim. I did support the war against Saddam Hussein and his government and anyone who tried to defend him. However I never thought of the war as an American war on the Iraqi people. I looked at it as a war for the Iraqi people and for the better of the region as a whole.

Now I feel terrible for any innocent person who dies during a war, but it is unavoidable. All that can be done is to try as hard as possible to minimize the death and suffering.

The US arsenol is vast and if America was in Iraq to committ atrocities and kill Iraqi people, then the Iraqi people would not be there.

The US could have totally leveled any city which housed insurgents by using carpet bombing techniques. We didn't fight the war as other wars were fought because we don't want to kill the innocent Iraqis. We want to kill those who are willing to kill to make the Iraqi government fall.

Anyways, I digress.

I do strongly disagree with some of the US post occupation policies. I don't think it was a good idea to completely disband the Iraqi government and I don't think it was a good idea to let the Iraqi army just walk away.

I was disgusted at the photos that came out of Abu Ghraib. That is not what America is about.

imaad_udeen said:

I do strongly disagree with some of the US post occupation policies. I don't think it was a good idea to completely disband the Iraqi government and I don't think it was a good idea to let the Iraqi army just walk away.

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That was all intentional: take down the Iraqi government and replace it with the West's.

imaad_udeen said:

I was disgusted at the photos that came out of Abu Ghraib. That is not what America is about.

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Too bad those photos were true, eh?

imaade_udeen said:

Because we liberated the Iraqis. I didn't see any other Muslim nations stepping up to the plate and delivering the Iraqi Muslims from his evil. Americans put their lives on the line to liberate the Iraqis.

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You do realise America is single handedly THE most powerful country in the World. You do realise they have enough firepower to take down ANY country in the world? America is a superpower - No other country comes close in terms of power. Only America could have carried out an assault on Iraq. Most muslim nations are pretty weak in terms of an army and power. Nobody forced the Americans to go to Iraq. The war on Iraq was never about liberation - that was just a cover up. It was really about the WMD. The liberation wasn't a primary objective.

imaad_udeen said:

I was disgusted at the photos that came out of Abu Ghraib. That is not what America is about.

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aslaam alkyum,

what do you mean? ofcourse it is all what americas about, americans love the concept of freedom right? well these soldiers were just exploiting their freedoms. It was just fickle feeling in the people (formerly known as morality) that made these soldiers actions look bad. see their free to do it, they just got caught.

Islam is not fickle, the rules are layed out and those rules are the only rules, you cant change them. the caliph cant just wake up one day and say " well actually i feel like abolishing stoning" no these are allah's rules there not fickle.

as alaam alkyum

aslaam alykum,

inshallah, its sad to see a pillar of islam fall.

wa alkykum aslaam

Assalamu 'alaikum

Although they plan, Allah also plans. And Allah is the Best of Planners
[Holy Qur'an 8:30]

Mr. Baldy said:

inshallah, its sad to see a pillar of islam fall.

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which pillar?

Mr. Baldy said:

aslaam alkyum,

what do you mean? ofcourse it is all what americas about, americans love the concept of freedom right? well these soldiers were just exploiting their freedoms. It was just fickle feeling in the people (formerly known as morality) that made these soldiers actions look bad. see their free to do it, they just got caught.

Islam is not fickle, the rules are layed out and those rules are the only rules, you cant change them. the caliph cant just wake up one day and say " well actually i feel like abolishing stoning" no these are allah's rules there not fickle.

as alaam alkyum

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Then how copme a man like Al-Zarqawi can use the Koran to justify cutting the head off of a bound prisoner while yelling "Allahu Akhbar?"

I thought the Koran was strictly against killing prisoners and those who are not fighting.

Hash said:

Today is the day my eyes lie to me, i can not belive what i am seeing on my sceen. My fellow Muslim Brother imaad Uddin, a fellow muslim brethen in faith, and look what he says, 'US libertaed iraq'. Subhannallaah, the day i see a muslim utter these words is the day the muslim ummah is plunged in darkness. My brother, i am pleading to you, wake up from this slumber of ignorance! Are you blind to reality? The US did not libertae iraq, they did not give them freedom. They illegally invaded Iraq, they illegally occupy this country, they are holding the country hostage. They use chemical weapons in fallujah and probaly other places. They have commited numerous ariel bombings with out mercy wiping out entire blocks, thousands of houses levellled, thousands of men women and childen, not even the old and the sick are spaed. We have seen US war planes drop bombs even on hospitals. 100 000 iraq's have been killed, the single biggest terrrorist attack of all time, commited by the US. That is 9/11 10 times over. They sexually, menatally and physicallt abuse our people in prosions like Abu Ggrahib and Guantamanio bay, they rape our sisters without mercy, inhumane cruelty. They have destroyed our mosques, our places of worship, more than 60 destroyed in fallujah alone. They have installed their own government in iraq. My brother, my friend imaad uddin, this is YOUR land these people have invaded, this is YOUR land that is being occupied by the kuffaar, this is YOUR brothers an sisters have been killed, and brother imaad uddin, if this is your frredom than by Allaah tell your people to keep it to themselves. A small message from the islamic reisistance movement in Iraq, ' we will send back your freedom in body bags, thanks but no thanks'.

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Brother Hash, how do you know of all this? You live in the UK. You live in a Kuffar country which is helping to do what you seem to hate so much.

I don't understand that.

I appreciate the tone of this post as compared to the others and I am sorry if my opinions anger you.

If Allah wills it, my opinions might change. But I see things how I see them and I am certianly not the only Muslim who supports the current Iraqi government.

We're all happy Saddam's gone, however the use of force was uneccessary.