Iraq - Mass Kurdish graves found

Reuters reports.

KIRKUK, Iraq, Sept 4 (Reuters) - The remains of 80 people, believed to be Kurdish victims of Saddam Hussein's regime, were unearthed in two mass graves near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Monday, a Kurdish security official said.

Tens of thousands of Kurds were killed in a military campaign in 1988 codenamed Anfal -- Spoils of War -- for which Saddam, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and five other former commanders are now on trial in Baghdad.

The deputy head of intelligence for Kirkuk, Salah Khaled, said the bodies were believed to date from Anfal, when the military razed villages, launched poison gas attacks and rounded up men, women and children before shooting them in mass graves in northern and southern Iraq.

"The remains of 18 bodies, mostly women and children, have been found in one of the graves. From their dress, they seem to be people who went missing during the Anfal campaign," he said.

Then Reuters offers up this possible defense of Saddam.

They are likely to argue that their crackdown on the villages along the Iranian border was justified because Kurdish rebels and their leaders had committed treason by forming alliances with arch-enemy Iran.

Even if true, that doesn't excuse murdering women and children in cold blood or using poison gas on whole populations.

Reuters, or at least this reporter, seemed to have learned something about today's reporting - a lesson the BBC desperately needs to learn. This is at the top of the story.

(Corrects date of Anfal campaign to 1988 from 1998 in paragraph 2) (Adds denial of reports 18 were buried alive, paragraph 5)

Why doesn't the BBC do this you ask? Because the corrections part would sometimes be as long as the original story or it would reveal just how biased the BBC really is.

Take the case of the recent air crash in Iran for example. The BBC originally reported that the crash may have been caused, in part, by US santions on Iran. This, despite the BBC reporting in the same article, that it was a Russian plane that crashed on landing due to a burst tyre. The reporter is a Muslim, married to an Iranian and lives in Iran. When all of this was pointed out by bloggers to the BBC, instead of a correction, as Reuters has done here, the BBC simply, quitely, stealth edited the sanctions part out.

Put the corrections at the end if you want, like other news organizations, but stop the stealth editing.