Rhinocrisy

It appears that Saddam Hussein’s attempt to steal the jobs of hard-working Americans went further than burying people alive.

“The Iraqi forces pounded our village in April 1987, forcing us to hide in nearby mountains which were later surrounded by the Iraqi army,” said the woman, the 14th complainer in the Anfal case.
“In the detention camp of Debis in Kirkuk, several masked soldiers sprayed us with unknown substance, which caused spreading diseases like whooping cough among children, and many of them died of the diseases later,” she said.
“Six months later we were released by the Iraqi army, only to find all family members disappeared for good,” she added.
A second witness who spoke anonymously told the court that rape was frequent in detention camps and many detainees died during their captivity, their bodies were eaten by dogs.

The guy was a trooper among despots, but he really shouldn’t have tried to challenge the masters.

Indiscriminate aerial bombardment
Chemical warfare
Disappearances
Routine rape in prison
Improper disposal of remains

Now I know this is a bit sophistic — you could go back into the history of any country and find a lot of horror, and I’m not sure that Teddy Roosevelt or George W. Bush are really worse than Saddam Hussein. What I’m trying to show is that the Iraqi leader’s problem may have been a failure to think as big as the Americans.

This is true even when it comes to deaths. In 22 years running Iraq, the most exaggerated estimate of the murders he oversaw is 1 million. By all accounts I’ve seen, private-sector murders were pretty much nonexistent during that period. In the three and a half years that the U.S. has nominally run the joint, we’re up to between 300,000 and 900,000!

Which just goes to show: If you want quality, you should stick to the brand you can trust.

1988:

A witness in the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has said her family was “buried alive” by government forces who attacked her village.

She gave evidence as the trial for alleged war crimes and genocide resumed in Baghdad after a two-week break.

1991:

Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them alive and firing their weapons from World War I-style trenches, were buried by plows mounted on Abrams battle tanks. The Abrams flanked the trench lines so that tons of sand from the plows funneled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, actually straddling the trench line, came Bradleys pumping 7.62mm machine gun bullets into the Iraqi troops.

“I came through right after the lead company,” said Army Col. Anthony Moreno, who commanded the lead brigade during the 1st Mech’s assault. “What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people’s arms and land things sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands.”

A thinner line of trenches on Moreno’s left flank was attacked by the 1st Brigade commanded by Col. Lon Maggart. He estimated his troops buried about 650 Iraqi soldiers. Darkness halted the attack on the Iraqi trench line. By the next day, the 3rd Brigade joined in the grisly innovation. “A lot of people were killed,” said Col. Davhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifid Weisman, the unit commander.

One reason there was no trace of what happened in the Neutral Zone on those two days was that Armored Combat Earth Movers came behind the armored burial brigade, leveling the ground and smoothing away projecting Iraqi arms, legs and equipment.

Fortunately for Messrs. Powell and Schwartzkopf, memory was banned in the Patriot Act. Or was it the 1996 Counterterrorism Bill. Or maybe the Constitution. I don’t remember.

Update: I forgot to mention that my bothering to compose this post is largely the result of my ongoing amusement with Mr. Schwarz’s liveblogging of the memory hole. He was still gracious enough to give us some hot link action. Hi TinyRevolutionaries!

I read Chris Hitchen’s 9/11 editorial in the WSJ last night. I realize Hitchens jumped the shark quite a while back, and one really should give very short shrift to everything on the Journal’s editorial page, but I’m continually astounded that people can openly espouse doctrines that should, at least ostensibly, be anathema these days. Here’s his conclusion:

The second point makes me queasy, but cannot be ducked. “We”–and our allies–simply have to become more ruthless and more experienced. An unspoken advantage of the current awful strife in Iraq and Afghanistan is that it is training tens of thousands of our young officers and soldiers to fight on the worst imaginable terrain, and gradually to learn how to confront, infiltrate, “turn,” isolate and kill the worst imaginable enemy. These are faculties that we shall be needing in the future.

This is what happens when you stay up late nights watching “Commando” and “Rambo, First Blood: Part Two” on FX.