I force myself to read things like this:

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Babies found in Iraqi mass grave

The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said.

Here's the really difficult part: we know this sort of thing is going on in other parts of the world - Sudan is the most prominent current example, I think.

I hope that, through our determination in the War on Terror, we will have greater influence over events in places like Sudan in the future, but who can really say? And even if it does, that doesn't help atrocities like this that are going on right now.

But what do we do? Send in the military every time? Depend on the U.N.?

Or do we simply have to accept that there is evil in the world, and we can't stop every instance of it every time? That's difficult for me to accept, especially after I check on our 4-year-old and he's sleeping with one of his spaceships tucked under his arm.

On a related note, the story also contains this paragraph:

Mr Kehoe said that work to uncover graves around Iraq, where about 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam Hussein's regime, was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part.

The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death.

A few other blogs have fastened onto that paragraph, to criticize the Europeans for their enthusiasm for protecting a mass murderer from execution.

I tend to oppose the death penalty, although I waffle on the issue. Still, I have to agree that there's something sickly ironic about a society that won't help us find mass graves because it could lead to the execution of the guy who filled them, after actively working to prevent us from removing that same murderer from power.

I noticed that paragraph for another reason: it says "about 300,000 people." A couple days ago I linked to this article, which contains this passage:

Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis.

Could be that the documentation used in either case was sloppy - Saddam's regime wasn't known for being open to outside investigation. Or, it could be that the estimate of 300,000 refers to a specific area, rather than the entire country. Don't know. Just thought I'd point the discrepancy out.