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A bulldozer buries in a mass grave, the bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers
A US Military graves detail with a bulldozer buries in a mass grave, the bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers killed along the Mile of Death, on the road between Kuwait City and Basra, north of Kuwait City. Many of the Iraqi soldiers were killed along this stretch of highway on the 25th and 26th of February. Few images of this scene have ever been seen.
US vs Iraq - Another 'Highway Of Death' Slaughter
By William A. Cook
12-24-2
"The US armed forces bombed one end of the main highway from Kuwait city to Basra, sealing it off. They bombed the other end of the highway and sealed it off. They positioned mechanized artillery units on the hills overlooking it. And then, from the air and from the land they simply massacred every living thing on the road. Fighter bombers, helicopter gunships, and armored battalions poured merciless firepower on traffic jams backed up for as much as twenty miles. When the traffic became grid locked, the B-52s were sent in for carpet bombing." Our forces did not wait for the fleeing people to surrender, they did not surround them and force them to surrender, they just exterminated them. Americans never heard about the "Highway of Death," they just paid for it, a slaughter that, in Barnes' words "ranks among the great atrocities of modern warfare."
What I saw was a bunch of filled-in trenches with people's arms and legs
'What I saw was a bunch of filled-in trenches with people's arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands'
Patrick J Sloyan on how the mass slaughter of a group of Iraqis went unreported
Patrick J Sloyan
The Guardian, Friday 14 February 2003
On February 25 1991 the war correspondent Leon Daniel arrived at a battlefield at the tip of the neutral zone between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Daniel was one of a pool of journalists who had been held back from witnessing action the previous day, when Desert Storm's ground war had been launched. There, right where he was standing, 8,400 soldiers of the US First Infantry Division - known as the Big Red One - had attacked an estimated 8,000 Iraqis with 3,000 Abrams main battle tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, Humvees and armoured personnel carriers.
Daniel had seen the aftermath of modest firefights in Vietnam. "The bodies would be stacked up like cordwood," he recalled. Yet this ferocious attack had not produced a single visible body. It was a battlefield without the stench of urine, faeces, blood and bits of flesh. Daniel wondered what happened to the estimated 6,000 Iraqi defenders who had vanished. "Where are the bodies?" he finally asked the First Division's public affairs officer, an army major. "What bodies?" the major replied.
Iraqis Buried Alive -- U.S. Attacked With Bulldozers During Gulf War Ground Attack
Newsday
FORT RILEY, Kan. - The U.S Army division that broke through Iraq's defensive front line used plows mounted on tanks and combat earthmovers to bury thousands of enemy soldiers - some still alive and firing their weapons - according to U.S. Army officials.
In the first two days of ground fighting in Operation Desert Storm last February, three brigades of the 1st Mechanized Infantry Division used the grisly innovation to destroy more than 70 miles of Iraqi trenches and bunkers being defended by more than 8,000 Iraqi soldiers, according to division estimates.
About 2,000 soldiers surrendered. But Iraqi dead and wounded, as well as defiant soldiers still firing their weapons, were buried beneath tons of sand, according to participants in the carefully planned and rehearsed assault.
"Once we went through there, other than the ones who surrendered, there wasn't anybody left," said Capt. Bennie Williams, who was awarded the Silver Star for his role
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Bush's Holocaust Of Iraq - Operation Desert Slaughter
Thoughts on holocaust memorial day
By Felicity Arbuthnot 1-28-2008
It is seventeen years since America and Britain embarked on their 'Final Solution' for the population of Iraq.
The forty two day carpet bombing, enjoined by thirty two other countries, against a country of just twenty five million souls, with a youthful, conscript army, with broadly half the population under sixteen, and no air force, was just the beginning of a United Nations led, global siege of near mediaeval ferocity. Having, as James Baker boasted they would, reduced 'Iraq to a pre-industrial age', the country was denied all normality : trade, aid, telecommunications, power, sanitation, water repairs, seeds, foods, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment.
U.S. Army Buried Iraqi Soldiers Alive in Gulf War
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: September 15, 199
1United States Army forces buried alive scores of Iraqi soldiers in their trenches in the early hours of the allied ground attack that ended the Persian Gulf war, Army commanders said this week.
The deaths took place during the operation in which American M1-A1 tanks of the First Infantry Division cut lanes through a 10-mile-wide stretch of barbed wire, minefields, bunkers and trenches north of the Iraqi-Saudi Arabian border on Feb. 24 as the allied ground offensive unfolded.
Allied Countries' Responsibilities to Document Iraqi Dead 1991
NOTE: In a privet correspondence with HRW, few years ago, I was able to get workable copy of their report about what happened to the nearly 100000 Iraq military people who died in the war in area controlled by the coalition forces. This is their official report. The relevant Iraq section is below. The full report with correspondence could be seen in Historical document on this s Allied Countries' Responsibilities to Document Iraqi Dead (1991)
Reports indicate that Allied forces are disposing of Iraqi military dead hastily and before proper documentation takes place, in violation of the First Geneva Convention. Article 16 states that "Parties to the conflict shall record as soon as possible, in respect of each wounded, sick or dead person of the adverse Party falling into their hands, any particulars which may assist in his identification." The Article lists examples of the types of information to be recorded and forwarded to the families through the ICRC,and requires parties to prepare and forward to each other certificates of death or duly authenticated lists of the dead. Article 17 requires parties to conduct, "as far as circumstances permit...a careful examination...of the bodies, with a view to confirming death, establishing identity and enabling a report to be made."
US and Saudi officials responded to Middle East Watch inquiries about procedures for handling Iraqi dead in a contradictory and unsatisfactory manner. Maj. Nickerson at US Central Command Forward told Middle East Watch, "We are not in the business of burying," explaining that Saudi mortuary platoons were responsible for the burials. When asked whether the Allied forces were keeping track of the numbers of dead Iraqi soldiers, he replied, "We don't count bodies." He referred Middle East Watch's questions to the Saudi Ministry of Information representative at the US Central Command Forward in Riyadh. But a Saudi spokesman there, while confirming that some Saudi mortuary teams were in the field, said they worked under US military command. He referred Middle East Watch back to US Central Command Forward.
Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (2)