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TIME: Almanac 1995
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<text id=90TT3481>
<title>
Dec. 31, 1990: Counting Up The Atrocities
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
Dec. 31, 1990 The Best Of '90
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
WORLD, Page 27
KUWAIT
Counting Up the Atrocities
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By MICHAEL KRAMER
</p>
<p> Was the Kuwaiti supermarket manager shot to death by Iraq's
occupation forces? Or was he beheaded? Or hanged? Three supposed
eyewitnesses described the murder differently to TIME, although
all agree on the result: the man is definitely dead. Whatever
actually happened, the fate of that particular Kuwaiti confirms
a well-known reality: truth is often war's first casualty.
</p>
<p> Among those who monitor atrocities for a living, a dispute
is simmering. How many Kuwaitis have been summarily executed
since Iraq's invasion on Aug. 2? How many have been tortured,
how many arrested, how many raped? No one knows for sure, and
few but Saddam's henchmen may ever know.
</p>
<p> At one level, the debate concerns intellectual honesty. At
least one human-rights organization believes the Kuwaiti
government in exile may be orchestrating exaggerated tales of
horror for political gain. "The situation is bad enough when you
consider just the tragedies that can be objectively verified,"
says Andrew Whitley, the executive director of Middle East
Watch, headquartered in New York. "There is no need to inflate
the statistics."
</p>
<p> The human-rights organizations are quarreling among
themselves. Middle East Watch, for example, contends that the
recent report by Amnesty International detailing human-rights
abuses in Kuwait is overdrawn. But the problem is one of degree
only. When Middle East Watch says Amnesty's high-range estimate
of perhaps a thousand murders exaggerates the toll by about 400,
that still leaves 600 victims of Iraqi brutality. And no one
disputes that Iraq has regularly tortured Kuwaitis. Again, the
only difference involves numbers.
</p>
<p> The account by London-based Amnesty International is crucial
because it has dramatically affected the world's most important
audience. Days after reading the 82-page report at Camp David,
George Bush was still talking about it. "I ask you to read half
of it," said the President during an interview with TIME in the
Oval Office. "If you can't stomach half of it, read a quarter
of it."
</p>
<p> Far more than the number of atrocities, the manner of Iraq's
barbarism has stuck with Bush. Amnesty documents 38 methods of
torture used by the Iraqis--everything from the use of
electric probes to the cutting off of ears and tongues. "Good
God," says Bush, "it is so powerful, you won't be able to
believe it."
</p>
<p> Human-rights reports are political documents. They are
embraced or ignored depending on the interests of nations.
Amnesty, for one, has regularly detailed the torture, detention
and murder of Iraqis--by Iraqis--but the U.S. hardly cared
about such atrocities during the years when Washington's Middle
East policy dicaccommodating Saddam. So when the President says
Amnesty's report has "really made an impression on me," he is
reacting in a new context. Had he been applying a consistent
human-rights standard all along, he would have been just as
exercised about last year's Amnesty report on Iraq, and perhaps
the Administration would have supported the sanctions some
Congressmen were urging before Saddam's brutality spilled beyond
Iraq's borders.
</p>
<p> More important, the U.S. may now move militarily--without
giving the sanctions time to work on Saddam--because the
President describes the Amnesty report as "one of the things
that's driving me. I've heard some guy telling me...we've
got time. Time. Read it. It's what's happening now. We don't
have a lot of time."
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>