VIA THE GUARDIAN, HERE’S MORE FROM IRAQ:
MAHAWEEL, Iraq (AP) – The killers kept bankers’ hours. They showed up for work at the barley field at 9 a.m., trailed by backhoes and three buses filled with blindfolded men, women and children as young as 1.
Every day, witnesses say, the routine was the same: The backhoes dug a trench. Fifty people were led to the edge of the hole and shot, one by one, in the head. The backhoes covered them with dirt, then dug another hole for the next group.
At 5 p.m., the killers – officials of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party – went home to rest up for another day of slaughter.
In this wind-swept field in the central town of Mahaweel, witnesses say, this went on without a break for 35 days in March and April of 1991, during a crackdown on a Shiite Muslim uprising that followed the first Gulf War.
“I watched this with my own eyes,” said Sayed Abbas Muhsen, 35, whose family farm was appropriated by Saddam’s government for use as a killing field. “But we couldn’t tell anyone. We didn’t dare.”
The mass grave at Mahaweel, with more than 3,100 sets of remains, is the largest of some 270 such sites across Iraq. They hold upward of 300,000 bodies; some Iraqi political parties estimate there are more than 1 million.
It’s worth keeping this sort of thing in mind, among the turkey-related quibbles.
UPDATE: Hey, maybe some people are keeping it in mind:
BAGHDAD — Up to 1,000 Iraqis, including children orphaned by the war that ousted Saddam Hussein, marched through Baghdad yesterday to denounce guerrilla attacks and show support for U.S.-led occupation forces. . . .
Carrying banners blaming Saddam loyalists for terrorism, the demonstrators marched down one of Baghdad’s busiest streets before gathering in Firdos Square, where a statue of Saddam was famously pulled down as U.S. troops drove into the heart of the capital in April.
“We organized this demonstration because the terrorists now kill a lot of people,” said Abdul Aziz Al-Yassiri, coordinator of the Iraqi Democratic Trend, a recently formed social group.
“They kill the children, kill women, kill the people, kill the police. They want to stop our plan for a democratic system.”
Think this will get one-tenth the attention that the turkey got?