Near Najaf

They haven't dug up any WMDs.

Just tiny bones buried alongside children's dolls.

For which the US should now apologize?

Item: A MASS grave containing the remains of 200 Kurdish children has been discovered in the northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk, the Kurdish newspaper Taakhi reported.

"Citizens discovered on May 30 a communal grave close to Debs, in Kirkuk. But this is different from other mass graves discovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein's terrorist regime because it contains the remains of 200 child victims of the repression of the Kurdish uprising" in 1991, the paper said.

"Even dolls were buried with the children," it said.

Indications are the children were buried alive.

"Too bad we invaded under 'false pretenses,'" comments Instapundit.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

One reason I find some of the grand-standing over WMDs increasingly preposterous is that it comes from people who really want to avoid the obvious: more and more it's clear that the liberation of Iraq was a moral obligation under any circumstances. People say to this argument that if we depose one dictator for these kinds of abuses, where will we stop? But the truth is: very few dictators have resorted to imprisonment or mass killing of children. Saddam's evil was on a world-historical scale. Ending it was one of the most progressive things the United States and Britain and their allies have ever done.

Here's Lileks:

I read today of another mass grave discovered in Iraq. This one was reserved for children.

I repeat: this was a special mass grave for children.

The article said that dolls were found among the bodies. Which meant that the little girls were clutching their dolls when they died.

Or they dropped them in terror at the edge of a grave. The soldiers kicked them in.

And this from The Lemon:

Coalition Admits Iraq has no WMD, Agrees to Restore Saddam to Power

Saddam was gracious in accepting his former position and is eager to get things back to normal. In order to aid in the restoration, the U.S. has released a special "Lil' Ones: Most Wanted" deck of playing cards, listing all of the children that need to be rounded up and thrown back into Saddam's child prisons. U.S. leaders apologized, admitting they had no right to free Saddam's prisoners.

Saddam thanked the U.S. for the assistance, but insists that it is not needed. When he learned that coalition forces were filling in the mass graves they had exhumed, he said, "Don't worry about filling in mass graves, I'll fill them up myself." (Via Relapsed Catholic)

Seriously, though, you read these accounts of Iraqi children murdered and imprisoned and you wonder anew at the aid groups that continue to blame the suffering on American-British military action meant to stop it.

Take the Irish Red Cross, which under the patronage of Irish President Mary McAleese continues to run a banner ad atop its page suggesting Iraqi kids had things carefree and gay before the war.

If you have little ones yourself you may already have had occasion to visit the website of the Wiggles. Now, my kids like the Wiggles. I like the Wiggles.

But if the Aussie kid-show singers are going to put a link on their home page to a charity to aid children in Iraq, couldn't they steer clear of Care Australia's anti-war politics?

Following Care International's prescription on Iraq would have guaranteed their humanitarian services would continue to be required in that benighted country, now and well into the future.

These NGOs purport to speak in the name of the children -- but not, apparently, for those tossed into mass graves or left to languish for years in Saddam's kiddie jails. Does appeasing the warlords who cause famines and refugee crises insure the aid community stays in business treating the victims? It can seem that way.