Confronting the horrors of Iraq’s graves

[unhappycamper]

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.


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

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.


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