While eating dinner at the local greasy spoon restaurant, I overheard a CNN interview with Michael "Sonny" Trimble, an archaeologist working with the U.S. Justice Department investigation into the mass executions of Iraqis by Saddam Hussein's regime.
He related their findings at one of the mass grave sites that they had excavated.
So far, 123 bodies had been recovered from that site. Many with hands tied behind their backs had been shot in the head. Then the bodies had been bulldozed into a trench. The victims are believed to be Shi-ites.
Average age of the victims...eleven.
The Iraqi ministry investigating these graves to gather evidence to be used in Saddam's trial have identified at least 40 such sites so far. Total number of the dead, according to various international agencies cataloging the evidence, is in excess of 300,000.
These innocent dead make a most compelling argument in support of the invasion that toppled Hussein's murderous regime. They make an eloquent rebuttal to those who maintain that the invasion was justified, and that the cowardly Iraqis got the government that they deserved.
It's a bit difficult to be courageous against a regime that murder's a revolutionary's wife and children, don't you think?
Meanwhile, arrogant and unrepentant as ever, Saddam continues to believe that he can bargain his way out of the death penalty.
Poor, deluded fool.
