🚀 go-pugleaf

From: gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
>How many Iraqis were killed in the recent Gulf War?  Fifty
>thousand, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand?  Nobody
>knows for sure.  One of the reasons is that the United States
>has chosen to violate the Geneva Convention in regard to the
>Iraqi dead.  According to the Geneva Convention, the party in
>control of a given territory after combat is responsible for
>making its best effort to find, count, and identify the
>casualties of its adversary, including the dead.  The U.S.
>command has made it clear that it has no intention of doing so.
>Many of the Iraqi dead were simply bulldozed into mass graves
>without any attempt to count them, much less identify them, and
>with no reports made or asked for.

As I understand it the British War Graves unit of their Army is in
charge of this particular operation, so your gripe may be with someone
else, tho that's a minor nit.

They are indeed burying in mass graves, and providing the location and
other details of these graves to the Iraqis. I don't know if the
Iraqis use "dog-tags" and whether these are being collected and
provided (I suppose it might be better to leave them with the body,
there must be some custom for this.)

I wouldn't expect the current Iraqi govt to go to a lot of trouble to
resolve this right now. I would be surprised if they were turned down
if they asked to exhume the graves, I don't believe they have asked
for anything (yet.)

My impression is that burying in mass graves and providing the
whereabouts is a step in resolving the matter.

It doesn't end there as later exhumation is still available,
essentially forever, but might take some settling of Iraqi internal
affairs to go to a second stage given the size of the operation
required to finally settle this.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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