Where Were the Mass Graves?

Jan. 03, 2007— -- As I watched the nonstop coverage of the Saddam Death Watch, I was told over and over that this was a heinous mass murderer. There were mass graves. That up to 300,000 people were killed during his reign.

Then they told us what he was actually convicted for -- 148 dead in Dujail. That's a terrible crime.

But there's at least that amount of people killed every two days in Iraq.

Now, I looked into the mass grave claims and the U.S. government found graves that contained hundreds of bodies in some places. And prosecutors claimed that Saddam gassed 5,000 Kurds in Northern Iraq.

This hardly adds up to 300,000 killed. I am not saying that he didn't kill that many, I just don't know why we didn't do our homework and convict him for all of his crimes. As Robert Jackson, the lead prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials famously said, "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow."

We need history on our side on this one. Remember, we invaded the whole country and turned it upside down because Saddam was such a bad guy. It would have been nice to prove how bad. I don't know why the trial seemed so rushed and third rate. Actually, I do know why. It's because Iraq is a complete mess and this whole fiasco is being run by the same incompetents who have screwed everything else up.

Please spare me the nonsense about how the Iraqis are a sovereign government and they were running the trial and we had nothing to do with it. Saddam did cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people when he started a war with Iran. That didn't get brought up much in the trial.

I am sure that the United States supporting him in that war and Don Rumsfeld selling him weapons to use in that war were not factors at all as to why that was not emphasized in his trial…run by the Iraqis. Remember, starting a war of aggression is the highest war crime. And Saddam clearly started one with Iran, as well as Kuwait. But then we're not in a very good position to talk about wars of aggression anymore.

Cenk Uygur is host of "The Young Turks" on Air America Radio.