Q: The 'highway of death'--do we know how many Iraqis were killed there?
Atkinson: I don't think we'll ever know how many Iraqis were killed there. There were about 1500 vehicles on the highway of death, counted, destroyed vehicles after the war. And another 400 or so on another road, a spur that ran parallel to the coast. Those who wandered through this wreckage right after the Iraqi surrender found relatively few bodies. Certainly some, and many that were terribly incinerated of those that were found. But the prevailing view is that many of the Iraqis had simply gotten out of their vehicles and ran. And it's difficult to believe that deaths on the highway of death probably exceeded more than a couple of hundred perhaps.
