Confronting the horrors of Iraq’s graves on the Anniversary...

[KoKo]

Confronting the horrors of Iraq’s graves
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Monday, June 02, 2008

(PHOTO's)
The mass graves of Iraq were buried under several feet of dirt after the victims they contained were gunned down. To expedite work, a large excavator was employed to remove overburden. Michael “Sonny” Trimble walks closely to the giant bucket as the skilled operator removes fractions of an inch. When Trimble sees the first evidence of remains, the inch-by-inch archaeological methods will start.
(PHOTO's)
David Hempenstal / Courtesy photo
Forensic archaeologist Michael “Sonny” Trimble and the Army Corps of Engineers were in charge of uncovering the mass graves in Iraq and making a case against Saddam Hussein’s regime in the attempted extermination of the Kurds. Trimble, a veteran of such digs, had trouble entering the gruesome grave sites after seeing children’s remains.

ARLINGTON, Va.- For the first 30 years that forensic archaeologist Michael "Sonny" Trimble worked among the dead, the bones he uncovered always stayed quiet in his mind.

Trimble’s employer, the Army Corps of Engineers, routinely sent him to places like Rwanda and Bosnia to help unearth the victims of genocide, or lend his expertise to U.S. law agencies to assist in homicide investigations.

But no matter how many victims were in those graves, or how distressing the condition of their remains, "nothing ever got to me," Trimble said.

Nothing, that is, until Iraq.

Trimble was there at the request of the U.S. Justice Department, leading an international team whose mission was to excavate mass graves from the 1988 Anfal Campaign, Saddam Hussein’s effort to exterminate the Kurds.

"It happened to me very early on," in late summer 2004 in Ninevah province, Trimble said. The team was excavating the first of what would later total nine mass grave sites.

The deep grave, dug on the edge of a wadi, was filled with the bodies — now mostly bones and rags — of about 130 Kurds. All were women and children, Trimble said.

Trimble began to walk down into the grave, when he saw, at the very bottom at the northern end, "a little kid, maybe 2 or 3 years old, that had fallen face-down."

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=55251

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Where have All the Young Men Gone (Long Time Dying...When Will they Ever Learn...When Will they EVER LEARN!)
http://www.the7thfire.com/Iraq_War/where_have_all_the_young_men_gone.htm

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1. K & R n/t.