Saddam's Own Records May Implicate Him

Dec. 15, 2003 — -- U.S. officials say evidence of the atrocities that Saddam Hussein committed against his people will be found in his regime's own records, and documented by videotapes made by the Iraqi security services.

"Mass killers do turn out to be bureaucrats," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat. "Nazi Germany kept its records. Saddam Hussein kept his records."

Executions and acts of brutality that occurred during the former Iraqi dictator's rule were regularly taped or documented, leaving a huge trail that leads directly to Saddam, officials say. For example, there are thousands of documents corresponding to the recently discovered mass graves across Iraq, according to Kanan Makiya, an exile who founded the Iraqi Memory Foundation.

"This is the material that will indict Saddam Hussein in his own words, so to speak, and will leave no shadow of a doubt of what kind of an extraordinary regime this was," Makiya said. "I would say he is responsible for just under two million deaths."

The records date back to at least the 1980s, when Saddam allegedly gave the orders to use chemical weapons against 250 Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. The victims were left lying in the streets where they died fleeing from the clouds of poison gas. It is stark evidence of what U.S. officials say are Nazi-like crimes against humanity.

"They were experimenting with the lethality of different kinds of chemical weapons, mustard gas, cyanide, nerve agents," Galbraith said. "Women, children, men, they were the guinea pigs in these experiments."

Such mass murders were allegedly carried out by Saddam's top generals, including Ali Hassan Majid, who was captured by U.S. troops in August. He was one of the most notorious members of Saddam Hussein's regime, and was also known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in the gas attacks on Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

Officials say some of the generals who may have been involved in mass murders have been captured and are now cooperating with U.S. investigators.