The Evil of War

When Defense Secretary Dick Cheney reported to Congress this past summer on the "success" of Operation Desert Storm, he made no mention of the fact that hundreds and perhaps thousands of Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by U.S. forces advancing into Kuwait during the ground phase of the war. He stated only that approximately 500 dead Iraqi soldiers had been buried.

But after Newsday broke the story in mid-September, the Pentagon acknowledged that some number of Iraqi soldiers in trenches who refused to surrender during the ground war were "undoubtedly" buried alive by combat "earth-movers" and plows mounted on tanks.

Participating Army personnel who were interviewed by Newsday's Patrick Sloyan were more forthcoming. "For all I know, we could have killed thousands," said Col. Anthony Moreno, one of the commanders of the assault.

"I came through right after the lead company," said Moreno. "What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people's arms and things sticking out of them."

According to the Newsday report, some participants in the assault were awarded medals for their performance. Army Private Joe Queen was awarded a Bronze Star for burying Iraqi trenches with his combat earth-mover.

"A lot of the guys were scared," Queen said. "But I enjoyed it."

The story received scant media attention. For example, Time ran just a short two-paragraph story in the "American Notes" section of its September 23 edition, and Newsweek offered only the frequently used soundbite from Pentagon spokesperson Pete Williams -- "There's no nice way to kill somebody in a war" -- in its "Overheard" column the same week.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Cheney recently defended the Pentagon restrictions on media coverage during the Gulf war, which kept media reports such as the recent Newsday story from reaching the American public during the war. "Nobody set out to deny people access to information," Cheney asserted in a meeting with news executives in September. Cheney reportedly maintained that Operation Desert Storm was "the best-covered war ever."

According to one of the meeting's participants, Associated Press President Louis Boccardi, it was agreed that Washington bureau chiefs who differ with Cheney's rosy assessment would sit down with the Pentagon's Pete Williams sometime in the next few months "to try and develop different rules for next time."

But when it mattered during the Gulf war, reporters were kept far away from the front lines so that word of operations such as the burying of Iraqis in trenches was prevented from getting out. Only now, months after the fact, are we beginning to learn about the nature of U.S. operations during the war.

And while some have debated whether the burying operation was acceptable wartime conduct, it is the horror of war itself that is evident from such disclosures.

"The details of the war, as they are more and more revealed, confirm again the evil of war," said U.S. Catholic Bishop Walter F. Sullivan, who recently succeeded Bishop Thomas Gumbleton as president of Pax Christi USA.

A senior Pentagon official recently explained why U.S. military censors refused to release graphic footage of Iraqi soldiers being sliced in half by helicopter cannon fire: "If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never be any war."

What a thought.

Chris Herman assisted with research.