Iraq

Most of my information that I use comes from what I hear or see on the History channel.  I watch and tape things regularly off the history channel and use what I have heard as best as I can.  So I started with a simple search on the history channel web page to see what information they would give me for free. 

http://www.historychannel.com/thcsearch/thc_resourcedetail.do?encyc_id=212381

this is just a brief biography of Saddam. 

1.                  70,000 Kurds killed in gas attacks on villages in Iraq. (5,000 in Halabja)

2.                  During the Persian Gulf War he suppressed rebellions in south Iraq killing 20,000 Shiites. 

3.                  Diverted the Tigris and Euphrates rivers forcing 250,000 marsh Arabs to leave their homeland.

Mass Graves found in Hatra. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3738368.stm

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135652,00.html

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/13/iraq.graves/

1.         Both give an estimate of 300,000 in mass graves.

Mass Graves in Iraq. 

http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html

1.         “We’ve already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves”   Tony Blair  Nov. 20, 2004

Mass grave found in south Iraq.  April 30,2005

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/29/AR2005042901191.html 

1.                  113 already exhumed, as many as 1,500 believed to be buried there  

2.                  From 1987 to 1988, Hussein initiated a wave of violence, called the Anfal campaign, to punish the Kurds for siding with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Hussein's forces forcibly relocated hundreds of thousands of Kurds from their lands in northern Iraq. Amin said as many as half a million people died or were killed outright and thousands of villages were destroyed.  (Paragraph 10, knickmeyer)

             3.                  More than 300 mass graves found since 2003 when Saddam was overthrown.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/saddam.htm

1.      1968 executed opponents and suspected potential rivals, including scores of high-level government officials and thousands of political prisoners.

General info

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/news/20030404-1.html

1.                  killed 40 members of his family

2.                  87-88 killed between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds.  2000 villages destroyed

3.                  According to Human Rights Watch “Iraqi leaders were privately acknowledging that 250,000 people were killed during the uprisings” (paragraph 10)

4.                  900,000 Iraqis displaced most of which are Kurds and 200,000 of which still live in Iran.

5.                  "Over the past five years, 400,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died of malnutrition and disease, preventively, but died because of the nature of the regime under which they are living." (Prime Minister Tony Blair, March 27, 2003) (paragraph 12)

6.                     paragraph 15

Executions: Saddam Hussein's regime has carried out frequent summary executions, including: o 4,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in 1984 o 3,000 prisoners at the Mahjar prison from 1993-1998 o 2,500 prisoners were executed between 1997-1999 in a "prison cleansing campaign" o 122 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in February/March 2000 o 23 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in October 2001 o At least 130 Iraqi women were beheaded between June 2000 and April 2001

Torture

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jackstraw1.html

 http://216.219.216.117/news/2003/emay/6_sports.html

  Post Gulf War

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War

 1.      A 1998 UNICEF report found that the sanctions resulted in an increase in 90,000 deaths per year

 This is about 2 hours or so worth of research.  I know of other things that can be added but haven’t looked into them too deeply for sources.  I know that during the Persian Gulf War a good number of the Iraqi army was forced to fight.  They were put in the desert and told to stay in their bunker and if they left the Republican Guard would shoot them for leaving their post.  I didn’t look for numbers on how many if any this happened too but it is believed that this is one of the reasons so many POWs were taken in Iraq when we liberated Kuwait. 

I didn’t find the number of Iraqis tortured either or the deaths resulting from these tortures.  I was watching a program on the history channel a while back that discussed the torture that Iraqis suffered.  I don’t know how many suffered torture, but I do remember the filing room that had a file on every person that they did torture.  If I can come across photos of the room or a story on the torture or documentation of the people that were tortured I will send it your way.