Iraq's Shia News looks at Saddam Hussein's legacy of mass graves:

When Iraqi refugees return to their homeland, they no longer have hope of finding their loved ones. Any such hope has disappeared except for a very few hopefuls who dread the bitter reality of loss. The only hope that still exists in the hearts of expatriates is finding the burial site of their relatives… Perhaps also some identifiable remains.

The search for those remains has become a daily chore for thousands of Iraqis today. New mass graves are discovered almost on a daily basis. Some sites contain tens of thousands of bodies, while some are just too swarming with human remains littered on top of each other that no one bothers to keep a head count. The bare bones, broken skulls, cuffed hands and scraps of clothing tell a horrifying story. Many skeletons belong to women, some even to young children. The scene is nothing short of horrendous, and the sorrow of loved ones is utterly inexpressible.

Each body has a story to tell. Each person had relatives, parents, and a family that was later forced to pay for the bullets used to kill them when a bill was dispatched to each household. The state was not going to pay for their punishment. The obligatory payment was probably the hardest thing to do.

I'll never forget listening to the voiceover commentary to the Criterion Collection laser disc of Brazil, when Terry Gilliam, its director, said people found it satiric when he included a scene where Jonathan Pryce's character was told that his family would receive a bill for his torture. And yet, as Gilliam noted, it's a surprisingly common practice amongst totalitarian regimes, dating back to at least the Nazis.

More from Shia News:

Yet those who received confirmation of their loved ones’ death were the lucky ones. Hundreds of thousands of wives, husbands, parents, and children never had any type of emotional closure. Until, that is, the infamous incarceration compounds were emptied, Ba’ath party records were checked, and finally mass graves were excavated.

Mass graves have been found in almost every major province. Some of them are group specific (one has been found to house Da’wa party members and another one for Islamic Action Organization adherents). Some are age specific. Even the children were not spared. There is no need to go into detailed descriptions of the sites and relate stories of those lucky few who fled only to tell almost unbelievable tales. The real problem lies in the fact that such stories are becoming mundane and have lost their position as the number one news story, having been “breaking news” items just a few days after the war.

And yet today, Amnesty International says that women are no better off today than they were under Saddam. Who are they trying to kid?