Archaeologists Uncover Saddam's Crimes

Archaeology Magazine has an interesting and sobering story about archaeologists and anthropologists under contract to the US Government who are digging up victims of Saddam's atrocities against the Kurds to support war crimes prosecutions. For more, see: http://www.archaeology.org/0901/etc/iraq.html

This blog has criticised other archaeologists for their all too cozy relationship with Saddam's regime. Hopefully, stories like the above will give pause to those in the archaeological community who sometimes still appear to be supportive of Saddam's fallen Baathist regime because of its promotion of archaeology in the country. Lest we forget, that support for archaeology was part and parcel of the Baathist ideology of control over "subject peoples" like the Kurds. And that ideology ultimately resulted in the atrocities that are being uncovered even today.