The men the left wishes were still in power in Iraq

NY Times:

A former top aide to Saddam Hussein had two men tied to concrete blocks and thrown from a helicopter into deep water in 1991, according to testimony on the third day of the trial of Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and 14 co-defendants on charges of crimes against humanity.

The executed men’s mother, Leila Khadem Nasser, 56, said she had found out about their fate after her brother and nephew, who had been detained at the same time, were released.

“I asked them about my two sons,” she said. “They said that they were executed. My nephew told me that they tied concrete blocks to their feet and threw them out of a helicopter in the Shatt al-Arab. That was nine days after their detention.”

She added: “My nephew said Ali Hassan al-Majid was the one who ordered their execution.”

Mr. Majid and 14 co-defendants are accused of crimes against humanity in the brutal suppression of an uprising by Shiites in southern Iraq in 1991 after Saddam Hussein’s forces withdrew from Kuwait, having been routed by an American-led coalition. He is known as Chemical Ali for his role in gassing Kurdish villages in the north, for which he received multiple death sentences. He has appealed in the case.

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Another witness, testifying anonymously, said today that he was tortured in prisons in Basra and Baghdad. In the Basra prison, he said, he was ordered to stand on a chair with a rope around his neck while officers asked him to confess. They kicked out the chair from under him and let him hang by the neck until he passed out, then they took him to another room where he regained consciousness.

The witness said he saw a girl who had been serving tea to officers at the prison forced by one of the officers into an adjoining room, and then he heard her screaming. He realized that she had been raped when another officer congratulated the officer who had taken her into the next room, telling him “you have married twice now, good for you.”

He also testified that: he saw hanged men in tents in the prison in Basra; soldiers in the prison raped a young boy who used to work as barber in Basra, and prisoners were tortured by being put into a barrel that was heated by a fire underneath it.

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What, no kite flying? Where are the terrorist rights peddlers? Where were they when these abuses were taking place? Will the left even acknowledge that this was worse than the hazing at Abu Ghraid?