"I started taking pictures. When they pulled a femur bone from the hole I almost dropped my camera. One of the agents pulled out a skull and held it up. There was a bullet hole directly between its eye sockets. They even found the slug that killed the victim. It was flattened out and about the size of a quarter…. But the eerie part was what the forensics officer said when he showed us the skull and the slug that had shattered it: “This guy took one between the eyes. He knew what his killer looked like.”

"That drove it home. These bones belonged to someone who had a life once, who had a family and friends who loved him. Then he was shot in the face and buried in the middle of the desert without a headstone or any trace that he ever existed."
- From a letter by Mark Rickert about what he winessed unearthing the graves of Iraqis slaughtered by Saddam Hussein

¶ Monday, December 19, 2005