BobHarris.com - U.S. negligence botches Saddam evidence

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U.S. negligence botches Saddam evidence

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Monday, 08 November 2004

Also from Human Rights Watch, whom I recommend visiting regularly:

U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq failed during last year’s invasion to safeguard official documents and the remains of victims in mass graves... As a result, crucial evidence for the upcoming trials of Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi officials has likely been lost or seriously tainted...

"Given what’s at stake here, the extent of this negligence is alarming," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. "U.S. and Iraqi authorities were aware that these documents and remains would be crucial to the prosecution of Saddam Hussein and other former officials, but they did little to safeguard them."

Human Rights Watch said that in the weeks and months following the invasion of Iraq, U.S.-led coalition forces failed to prevent people from freely looting thousands of official documents, or to keep relatives of “disappeared” persons from digging up remains found in some mass gravesites. Coalition forces subsequently failed to put in place the professional expertise and assistance necessary to ensure proper classification and exhumation procedures. As a result, it is very likely that key evidentiary materials have been lost or tainted.

In the case of mass graves, these failures have also frustrated the ability of families to know the fate of thousands of missing relatives who “disappeared” during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Um... OK. And Saddam was supposed to be, uh, the whole point.

And tens of millions of Americans voted for this. AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHH!