Why war in Iraq
Craig Trebilcock:
"...Upon entering southern Iraq U.S. troops encountered a battered and despised Iraqi Shi'ite population that Saddam Hussein had denied water, electricity, water and medical care for decades. People lived at a bronze-age level in a country possessing the richest natural resources on the planet. Comprising 60 percent of the nation's population, the Shi'ites were treated as enemies of the state by the 20 percent Sunni population that was the core of Saddam's Ba'ath Party. Why is that an issue for the United States? The answer to that crystallized for me in a swampy field in Southern Iraq in April 2003. Escorting a group of U.S. government officials to inspect a recently discovered mass grave 60 miles south of Baghdad, we encountered a killing field, where the Ba'athist regime had systematically executed approximately 5,000 Shi'ite men, women and children in retaliation for the Shi'ite uprising in 1991.
"As we searched for the mass grave outside the city of Al Hillah, we drove along a levee between two swampy fields. We soon realized that the levee itself was the gravesite. As we stepped from the vehicles and established a security perimeter, we saw that we had driven into the middle of an area of human remains barely covered by earth. A rib cage was disturbed beneath our front bumper. A section of jaw with the teeth intact lay on the surface next to my vehicle. The ball joint of a hip protruded from the dust a few feet away. AK-47 bullets from the Iraqi military's execution squad laid on the surface next to the remains and the partially decomposed clothing of the victims.
"Our Iraqi translator informed us that Saddam Hussein had systematically terrorized and eliminated anyone from the Shi'ite majority in southern Iraq who had not supported him in the first Gulf War. Entire families were seized by the Iraqi security forces and trucked to more than 60 execution sites throughout southern Iraq. Day and night, the trucks and buses rolled into the fields, where entire families were shot down and buried in mass graves. Children were not spared, as their deaths created a strong deterrent to future resistance against the regime. In some instances, buses were driven into large pits and not even unloaded. The victims were shot in their seats and then the entire vehicle buried as their tomb. Over sixty such mass graves have been located thus far in southern Iraq.
"The most disturbing memory of that gruesome inspection was not the human remains laying on the surface, but a small dusty sandal lying in the middle of the levee. It belonged to a little girl of approximately 8 or 9 years old. She had been executed with her family simply because she was born in the wrong part of Iraq and was not of the Sunni faith favored by the regime. I could only imagine the terror that that young girl had experienced as she and her parents were marched into the swamp to die. The girl's enthusiasm and joy for life, which we see in the eyes of our own children, was cruelly snuffed out by a bullet. The sandal was the only evidence remaining of the lost potential of that young life.
"As I stood there, 12,000 miles from home, any doubt regarding the propriety of our action to remove Saddam Hussein evaporated...."
Craig Trebilcock:
"...Upon entering southern Iraq U.S. troops encountered a battered and despised Iraqi Shi'ite population that Saddam Hussein had denied water, electricity, water and medical care for decades. People lived at a bronze-age level in a country possessing the richest natural resources on the planet. Comprising 60 percent of the nation's population, the Shi'ites were treated as enemies of the state by the 20 percent Sunni population that was the core of Saddam's Ba'ath Party. Why is that an issue for the United States? The answer to that crystallized for me in a swampy field in Southern Iraq in April 2003. Escorting a group of U.S. government officials to inspect a recently discovered mass grave 60 miles south of Baghdad, we encountered a killing field, where the Ba'athist regime had systematically executed approximately 5,000 Shi'ite men, women and children in retaliation for the Shi'ite uprising in 1991.
"As we searched for the mass grave outside the city of Al Hillah, we drove along a levee between two swampy fields. We soon realized that the levee itself was the gravesite. As we stepped from the vehicles and established a security perimeter, we saw that we had driven into the middle of an area of human remains barely covered by earth. A rib cage was disturbed beneath our front bumper. A section of jaw with the teeth intact lay on the surface next to my vehicle. The ball joint of a hip protruded from the dust a few feet away. AK-47 bullets from the Iraqi military's execution squad laid on the surface next to the remains and the partially decomposed clothing of the victims.
"Our Iraqi translator informed us that Saddam Hussein had systematically terrorized and eliminated anyone from the Shi'ite majority in southern Iraq who had not supported him in the first Gulf War. Entire families were seized by the Iraqi security forces and trucked to more than 60 execution sites throughout southern Iraq. Day and night, the trucks and buses rolled into the fields, where entire families were shot down and buried in mass graves. Children were not spared, as their deaths created a strong deterrent to future resistance against the regime. In some instances, buses were driven into large pits and not even unloaded. The victims were shot in their seats and then the entire vehicle buried as their tomb. Over sixty such mass graves have been located thus far in southern Iraq.
"The most disturbing memory of that gruesome inspection was not the human remains laying on the surface, but a small dusty sandal lying in the middle of the levee. It belonged to a little girl of approximately 8 or 9 years old. She had been executed with her family simply because she was born in the wrong part of Iraq and was not of the Sunni faith favored by the regime. I could only imagine the terror that that young girl had experienced as she and her parents were marched into the swamp to die. The girl's enthusiasm and joy for life, which we see in the eyes of our own children, was cruelly snuffed out by a bullet. The sandal was the only evidence remaining of the lost potential of that young life.
"As I stood there, 12,000 miles from home, any doubt regarding the propriety of our action to remove Saddam Hussein evaporated...."
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