OBAMA YAWNED:

Archivists chronicle Iraqis' pain: A team studying Hussein-era records finds that each one of the more than 11 million pages is witness to a family's suffering. (Alexandra Zavis, September 17, 2007, Los Angeles Times)

Staring directly at the camera, Zahra Badri begins: "I have not had one good day in my life."

Saddam Hussein's regime imprisoned and killed 23 of the Shiite woman's relatives, including her husband, her son and her pregnant daughter. To save two other sons, she kept them hidden inside her home for more than 20 years.

As Iraq is swept up in new bloodshed, a small team of archivists and videographers has begun the painstaking work of collecting, classifying and preserving evidence of such atrocities. Some of it is newly recorded, a cataloging of terrible memories, but much of it was documented in obsessive and chilling detail by Hussein's vast bureaucracy.

Each one of the more than 11 million yellowing pages and more than 600 hours of footage amassed by the Iraq Memory Foundation is witness to a family's pain, says its founder, Kanan Makiya, a longtime Iraqi exile in the United States and author of "Republic of Fear," the book that brought Hussein's savagery to international attention in 1989.

UnAmerican is not a term to be used lightly, but what better describes Senator Obama's position that such savagery does not warrant American-led regime change?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 17, 2007 7:16 AM