Okay, so perhaps there weren't weapons that could have been launched on 45 minutes notice, but that doesn't mean Saddam was just a nice guy misunderstood.

US investigators preparing war crimes trials against Saddam Hussein and his deputies have uncovered the bodies of hundreds of Kurdish men, women and children in the first forensic exhumation of a mass grave in Iraq.

The grave site, in Hatra, near the ancient city of Nineveh, is thought to hold the bodies of several thousand Kurds in nine separate trenches. One, named Grave 002, holds the corpses of around 300 women and children.

For nearly a dozen years, the world has been aware of the threat that Saddam posed to humanity, beginning with his own countrymen. The shame should not be on Bush for completing his daddy's war - the sham should be on Clinton for not completing it.

In Grave 002, a narrow trench running downhill into the sand, investigators found some of the most harrowing scenes. One woman had died still holding in her arms her child, aged two. She was shot in the face, the child was shot in the back of the head.

The remains of several foetuses were found among the bodies, the youngest put at between 18 and 20 weeks. "Tiny bones, femurs, thighbones the size of a matchstick," said P Willey, a professor of anthropology from Cal ifornia State University who is in charge of the morgue set up in a tent near the site.

Somehow, the international opinion is to blame the Americans.

Investigators from Europe are not taking part in the excavations because of concerns about the Iraq special tri bunal's decision to use the death penalty in sentencing war crime convicts.

Dozens of grave sites were unearthed in an often chaotic manner immediately after the war last year by relatives of people who had disappeared.

At the time international human rights groups criticised the US military and occupation authorities for failing to oversee proper investigative exhumations. At least 300,000 Iraqis are believed to have been killed under Saddam's regime and at least 40 graves have so far been uncovered.

International human rights courts are criticizing the US? For what - gathering evidence? Don't blame the messenger! If the United States is finding something far more gruesome than WMD's, what is making Europe so huffy? Is it because they will suddenly have to admit that they should have helped take this monster out, instead of leaving it to the US? If the executions of 300 women and children isn't mass destruction, I ask Europe to please define what is.