No Basis for War of Choice: Will the issue of Iraqi mass graves prove to be the third strike for George W. Bush?

Strike Three: Mass graves. Paul Wolfowitz more genteelly described this as “the criminal treatment of the Iraq people” which he also stated was “…not a reason to put American kids lives at stake.” It is almost inevitable that skepticism over Iraqi mass death will attain the disdain reserved for Holocaust deniers. But our qualms are based on being led into an unnecessary, costly, and ruinous war based on a miserable failure of intelligence, distorted facts, biased interpretations, wild exaggerations, and a relentless campaign of equivocation, double-talk, and cover up. In the last analysis even some of the harshest critics will say that Iraq was in some way justified because Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer.  Here’s the pitch: there are between 300,000-400,000 bodies contained within 260 to 270 mass graves. The mass graves announcement was made November 8, 2003 by Sandra Hodgkinson, at the time director of the Provisional Authority’s Mass Graves Action Plan. Hodgkinson reported that there were “reports” from Iraqis and that they believed the estimates of sites and bodies. She said they had confirmed 40 sites and identified 2,115 bodies.  But in July of 2004 Tony Blair’s office admitted that the number of bodies that had been found in mass graves had been exaggerated by 88%. The number of bodies was put at 5,114 and the estimates of 300,000-400,000 unsubstantiated. They further stated that the remaining 215 suspected grave sites had yet to be examined and confirmed. The larger numbers were only based on estimates of estimates and when forensic teams went to the sites, claims of 10,000 buried converted into several hundred. [more]