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BAGHDAD BUTCHER By RALPH PETERS April 2, 2003 -- JOHN Lee Anderson, a Peter Arnett understudy reporting from Baghdad, gave a radio interview recently in which he referred to allied airstrikes as "atrocities." He spoke reproachfully of the Iraqi civilian casualties he had seen in hospital wards, then told of widespread destruction wrought in Baghdad. He described a landscape of death and wanton devastation, all stamped "Made in America." No matter that other journalists in the same city report virtually no damage to civilian targets and even speak of the population's casual confidence in the precision of America's weaponry. What really should concern us is Mr. Anderson's enthusiasm for embracing the official Iraqi interpretation of this campaign (Mr. Anderson is a writer of some talent employed by The New Yorker, a minor magazine loosely affiliated with the Baghdad regime). Certainly, allied weapons may miss their targets, despite technological advances. But when we err and confirm it, we admit even our most painful mistakes - as CENTCOM did immediately after Iraqi civilians in a speeding vehicle were shot at an Army checkpoint. Thus far, there has been no concrete evidence that any of the civilian casualties in Baghdad were the victims of U.S. bombs. Mr. Anderson didn't bother to mention that, since the start of the war, Iraqi air defense guns have fired millions of rounds of varying caliber into the skies over Baghdad. And what goes up does, indeed, come down. More dangerous still, the Iraqis have launched several hundred - perhaps thousands - of surface-to-air missiles into those same skies. Some self-destruct in the air, casting debris over a wide area. Others fall back to earth and explode wherever they happen to land. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind: Those rounds and missiles are killing and wounding Iraqis every day, in significant numbers. Leave aside the Saddam regime's favorite tactic of creating atrocities among its own people, then blaming others. Leave aside any suspicions about those two marketplace "bombings" that both just happened to involve crowded spots in poor areas where regime support is weak - not the neighborhoods where the generals and bureaucrats live. Just remember, as Mr. Anderson did not, that the regime wildly firing tons of steel and explosives into the sky above its capital city does not have an especially good record of telling the truth. Less than two weeks into this war, the Arab- slaughtering regime in Baghdad has racked up a tally of atrocities it took Hitler and Stalin - Saddam's models - six years of warfare to accumulate. By the standards of Dictatorship U., Saddam's at the top of his class. Here's a partial list of what the regime's henchmen have done since the war began: * Used their own people as human shields in countless instances. * Engaged in acts of genocide against Shi'a Muslims in the south of Iraq. * Forced Iraqi civilians to take up arms at gunpoint. * Executed Iraqi civilians on the spot for any suspicion of disloyalty or even indifference. * Cut off food and water to Shi'a Muslim urban populations. * Used the most sacred shrines of Iraq's Shi'as as military strongpoints and arms caches. * Used hospitals as military staging areas, fighting positions and arms storage depots. * Took Iraqi family members, including children, hostage. * Executed allied POWs in cold blood, while abusing others. * Prevented the International Red Cross or Red Crescent from visiting allied soldiers taken as POWs. * Fought in civilian clothes, in violation of the Geneva Convention and the Laws of War. * Employed false surrenders to lure allied troops into ambushes, in violation of the same. * Committed multiple acts of terrorism against Iraqi civilians and coalition forces. * Forced unwilling soldiers to attack allied forces by executing some and driving the others forward at machine-gun point - far from patriotic resistance, this is the mass murder of Iraqis by Iraqis. * Attempted to create an ecological and economic catastrophe in Iraq's Shi'a and Kurdish regions by rigging oil fields for demolition. * Attempted to prevent relief supplies from reaching Iraqi civilians. * Welcomed and harbored terrorists from abroad. * Took practical steps to prepare Iraqi troops for the use of chemical weapons against allied forces. This is only a fragmentary list. We cannot yet measure the ongoing purges and executions within Baghdad, where a maddened regime clings to life and sees enemies everywhere. Nor have we seen the atrocities in areas yet to be reached by allied troops. Many more crimes against humanity are likely to unfold in the days ahead. Unwilling or unable to speak directly to his own people, Saddam or a surviving son used a spokesman to call for a jihad against the allied liberators. This plea comes from a regime that has killed and tortured more Muslim clerics than any other in our time. The Ba'athist regime also has used its arms to impose the tyranny of a Sunni Muslim minority over a Shi'a majority kept in bondage and poverty. If there is any justification for a holy war, it would be a jihad of oppressed Shi'as against the infidel dictatorship in Baghdad, which is cynically attempting to use Islam as a tool after decades of violating the faith. We may wonder, in fairness, how those heroic Europeans who have taken to the rhetorical barricades in defense of Saddam will respond when all the atrocities are catalogued, when the torture chambers are opened and the political prisons unlocked, when the mass graves are unearthed, the weapons of mass destruction revealed and the extent of European complicity with a criminal regime is made public. What will the Europeans say as the tormented people of Iraq begin to awake and tell their tales? The Europeans will sigh, briefly, then have a pleasant lunch. As for Saddam - if he is alive - he's a coward, terrified to emerge to lead the people he has oppressed. If dead, we may be certain he is not enjoying the lovely virgins of paradise, but something even more stimulating. As for his vainglorious crap about being the new Saladin - Saladin was a Kurd. And, unlike Saddam the Fallen, Saladin was famous for his humanity. Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World