by James Glaser
May 4, 2005

Every time the news talks about finding a new mass grave in Iraq, they assume that it was the dirty work of Saddam Hussein or his cohorts, but some of those mass graves are ours.

In the other George Bush's war with Iraq many horrifying things happened that were only reported long after the war was over. When asked about the reporting on that war, Col. David Hackworth said, "The Gulf War was one big lie from beginning to inconclusive end."

Malcolm Lagauche writes in an article titled "Operation Bury 'Em Alive," about how thousands of Iraqi troops were buried alive in their trenches by American tanks fitted with plows. "The brigades of the 1st Mechanized Infantry Division (the Big Red One) used the tactic to destroy trenches and bunkers that were being defended by about 10,000 Iraqi soldiers. These combatants were draftees, not the seasoned troops such as the Republican Guard."

"The assault had been carefully planned and rehearsed, According to US participants, about 2,000 Iraqis surrendered and were not buried. Most of the rest, about 8,000 were buried beneath tons of sand—many trying to surrender. Captain Bennie Williams was rewarded for his part in the burying with a Silver Star. He said, "Once we went through there, other than the ones who surrendered, there wasn't anybody left."

Colonel Anthony Moreno, commander of the second Brigade said, "For all I know, we could've killed thousands"

In that same war, there are mass graves all along the road from Kuwait to Iraq and after the war that section of highway was called, "The Highway of Death."

American air power found a sixty mile long panicked retreat of Iraqi soldiers and Palestinian civilians and their families on the Kuwait to Basra highway. It was reported that the road was bumper-to-bumper traffic and that we carpet bombed with B-52s and 1.000 pound bombs, and repeatedly hit the area with laser-guided missiles and "smart' bombs. It has been reported that it was a real "turkey shoot" and all of the Iraqi soldiers and the Palestinian workers and their families were slaughtered.

Because of local custom about quick burial, the bodies of the dead were buried in mass graves close to the roadside.

From a military point of view there two mass killings were the thing to do. I am sure our military leaders figured burying people alive saved American lives and bombing that highway could be said to be hitting a military target, because there were Iraqi troops mixed in with the civilians.

I am also sure that every time we find some mass grave that was caused by Saddam, he can say the same thing. In his mind the killings were probably military targets. Saddam's mass graves contain the bodies of women and children and the mass graves caused by our American military do too.

It isn't a contest of whose mass graves are the worst, they are all horrible. If we didn't spend tens of millions of dollars in cleaning up the World Trade Center grounds, we would have had a mass grave there. In third world nations, they can't afford that type of clean up or they don't have the technology to do it like we do, so they put all the bodies in one hole and cover them up.

I feel grateful that Americans have no idea of the scale of death that our troops can inflict on a population when we send them off to war, but maybe it would be better if they knew. Our Soldiers and Marines are trained to kill and kill they do and sometimes they kill on a grand scale. There is no doubt that we buried thousands of Iraqis alive in their trenches and there is no doubt that we have made mass graves all over this globe. So next time you hear about some mass grave discovered out in the desert of Iraq or the jungle of some other country, don't jump to conclusions as to who caused that burial. It might have been your neighbor, your dad, husband, your son, or maybe your daughter. We are not always the good guys. War is evil.