The "monsters" were Saddam's Baathist thugs, reports Lewis M. Simons in the January National Geographic, and the baby was unearthed in one of the many mass graves discovered in Iraqi deserts since the March 2003 invasion. Simons went to Iraq to report on Camp Slayer, where scientists examine the "new forensic evidence of Saddam Hussein's murderous regime." He notes that Clark University's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies estimates that the Baathist regime murdered up to 240,000 men, women, children and infants. Here are some of the victims and how they died:
Patterns of neat bullet holes peppered skulls and garments, many of them the baggy trousers peculiar to Kurdish men. Staring at cardboard boxes filled with skulls in plastic bags and skeletons precisely arrayed on steel gurneys, inhaling the oddly metallic death smells.... "As you work with the victims, especially the children -- their clothing, the baby bottle, the little shoes, just like the ones we bought for our daughters years ago, the little hands, so expressive in death -- you have to try not to get into the heads of the monsters who did this, or it becomes overwhelming. You look at a perfectly knitted baby bonnet with two bullet holes in it, and you think, these could be your own kids," [said an American forensic scientist]. "The women often had children with them and received, perhaps, the blessing of being shot once at close range. All of this is based on clear evidence, not speculation." [He] pointed out an entry hole at the top of the skull ... an exit hole near the left socket, and a radiating crack in the left cheek ... female, mid-30s, five foot four to five foot six....
Simon also notes:
Initially, X [an Iraqi forensic scientist] gladly agreed to be identified in this story. But shortly before it went to press he got word to me of death threats against him and his family.... The threats most likely where made by Sunni supporters of Saddam Hussein, who are striving to diminish evidence against the former dictator.
As Sen. John McCain has said, President Bush's "choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat." Saddam was indeed a monster worth slaying.