01-02-2003 00:53									#1
	From the NYTimes on Iraq... Put an end to popups!

A vewry interesting piece of writing can be found today in the NYTimes Op-Ed, dealing with the gassing of Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988. Know, the author seems to be a war skeptic, but he does provide several very interesting new ideas for this forum to play with, if it feels so inclined. Enjoy:

quote: A War Crime or an Act of War? By STEPHEN C. PELLETIERE ECHANICSBURG, Pa. — It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: "The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured." The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein. But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story. I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair. This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target. And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time. These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran. I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them. In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq. We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region. Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change. Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades — not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein's Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies. All that is needed to get us into war is one clear reason for acting, one that would be generally persuasive. But efforts to link the Iraqis directly to Osama bin Laden have proved inconclusive. Assertions that Iraq threatens its neighbors have also failed to create much resolve; in its present debilitated condition — thanks to United Nations sanctions — Iraq's conventional forces threaten no one. Perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his people. And the most dramatic case are the accusations about Halabja. Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive regimes Washington supports? Stephen C. Pelletiere is author of "Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Persian Gulf."

	01-02-2003 01:04									#2
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I found this quote by pelletiere

""Bush and Blair want a war in Iraq and they are both prepared to lie if necessary, in order to get one," said Dr Stephen Pelletiere, who recently retired as professor of National Security Affairs at the US Army War College. "Blair's so-called dossier is supposed to be based on 'intelligence'," he said. "It insults our intelligence by recycling old, discredited propaganda and presenting it as fact. - "When lies appear in an official Government report to a sovereign Parliament, well then you have to ask yourself just what is going on." Pelletiere said that crucial claims made in the British Government's Dossier on Iraq - and repeated by Tony Blair in his statement to the Commons - were patently false. - In 1990, Pelletiere, Professor Leif Rosenberger and Lt Colonel Dr Douglas Johnson of the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College wrote "Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War."

"It all boils down to two three-letter words," he said. "Ego and oil "Blair's dossier includes a photograph which I know for a fact was produced by the Iranian propaganda machine.

"Claims that Iraqis gassed their own Kurdish civilians are constantly invoked by the mass media. "That excuse was used by President Clinton in December 1998 to justify the further bombing and destruction of Iraq. "The Halabjah incident is one of the reasons being proposed now by Prime Minister Blair and President Bush for a full-scale military assault on Iraq. "Meanwhile, estimates of the number of innocents who have died in Iraq from relentless American-dictated U.N. sanctions range between a million and 1.7 million, including more than half a million children."


this guy is not unbiased - he's apparently making a career as a saddam defender. (which is not irreconcilable with being ex-CIA) I read the New Yorker piece - its pretty convincing - the iraqi planes flew overhead, and then the gas came. I beleive the accusation that it was really the Iranians has been discussed elsewhere extensively, but if you reallly want to disucss it here we can. IIRC there are even internal Iraqi docs (turned over by defectors) docuementing the Iraqi role - this is basically the equivalent of holocaust denial, IIUC, but i suppose we need to rehash it. So be it.

	01-02-2003 01:06									#3
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Very interesting read. The part about water is extremely significant, as water in the hands of a puppet regime might become the key to make the whole region dependant of this puppet regime (and hence the US).

Also, the arcticle busts another "fact" from the Bush admin to go to war against Iraq. However, Iraq remains a ruthless dictatorship, and the argument in favor of the regime change remains the only one not to completely take water. I also don't doubt Hussein killed his own Kurds, just to get them in line : typical behavior from a dictator.

	01-02-2003 01:10									#4
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Lord of the Mark:

Equal to Holocaust denial?

I am sorry but that is pre big Hyperbole.

I am not privy to intelligence, as I guess neither are you. Since I don't get the New Yorker, how do they dismiss the notion that the Gas was either a) Iranian or b) Iraqi meant for Iranians?

As for it having been discussed elsewhere, where? (I ask out of curiosirty, not as a challenge).

	01-02-2003 01:11									#5
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From the American Foreign Policy Magazine, Princeton University

December 2, 2002
To the Editor:

I am writing in response to Jonathan Goldwasser?s November 25th article entitled, ?Arsenal of Evil?, on Iraq?s WMD capabilities. His caption on the alleged Halabja is misleadingly captioned to suggest that Iraqi forces were solely responsible for the incident. Goldwasser may not be aware that shortly after Halabja, the Pentagon initiated a study into the alleged massacre. The three authors, Stephen Pelletiere, Lt. Col. Douglas Johnson, and Professor Leif Rosenberger, reported in their 1990 US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute?s paper, ?Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War?, (which can be found at www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203) that there is no evidence that ?Iraq perpetrated the attack.? The document has been open source material for the past 12 years, yet it is always somehow overlooked or ignored. According to eyewitness accounts, the Kurdish victims? mouths and extremities turned blue, a sign of the use of blood agents, i.e. cyanogen chloride. According to Pelletiere, the former senior CIA political analyst on Iraq throughout the entire Iran-Iraq War, Iraq has no history of using those two agents, and did not possess the technology to make them either- Iran did. After the battle at Halabja, Iran purposely flew in foreign news journalists to document the grisly scene. Halabja was not a target of ethnic cleansing by Iraqi forces, but the victim of attacks and counter-attacks by both Iran and Iraq in efforts to retake the strategically located village. In US terms, Halabja was ?collateral damage?.

Suberr Chi ?03



Regretfully, we must inform Mr. Chi that his information is dated. Since 1990, declassified information, captured documents, and Iraqi defectors have detailed in chilling detail the Iraqi chemical weapons "test" at Halabja. Much of the evidence lies in the hands of Human Rights Watch, an organization with impeccable credentials. Iraqi leaders have since claimed responsibility for Halabja with grotesque glee. In 1991, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, Vice Chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council stated publicly to the Kurds, "if you have forgotten Halabja, I would like to remind you that we are ready to repeat the operation."

Sincerely,

The Editors

	01-02-2003 01:14									#6
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"Chemical Ali" in his own Words

According to a 1988 audiotape of a meeting of leading Iraqi officials published by Human Rights Watch, al-Majid vowed to use chemical weapons against the Kurds, saying:

"I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? **** them! the international community, and those who listen to them!

"I will not attack them with chemicals just one day, but I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days."

	01-02-2003 01:14									#7
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quote: But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds.

This is where he loses all creditablity with me. The fact that he's a seriel Saddam appalogist just confirms his lack of objective thinking skills.

	01-02-2003 01:16									#8
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"Several thousand Kurdish villages were destroyed, forcing residents to live in appalling camps. In at least 40 cases, Iraqi forces under Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, used chemical weapons to kill and chase Kurds from their villages. Then, during the Anfal campaign from February to September 1988, Iraqi troops swept through the highlands of Iraqi Kurdistan rounding up everyone who remained in government-declared "prohibited zones." Some 100,000 Kurds, mostly men and boys, were trucked to remote sites and executed. Only seven are known to have escaped.

The full scope of the Anfal horror became known only after Saddam's defeat in the Gulf War. The Iraqi military's withdrawal from the region in October 1991 after the imposition of a no-fly zone made it feasible for the first time in years for outsiders to reach the area.

Human Rights Watch investigators took advantage of this opening to enter northern Iraq and document Saddam's crimes. Some 350 witnesses and survivors were interviewed. Mass graves were exhumed. And Kurdish rebels were convinced to hand over some 18 tons of documents that they had seized during the brief post-war uprising from Iraqi police stations. These documents were airlifted to Washington, where Human Rights Watch researchers poured through this treasure trove of information about the inner workings of a ruthless regime.
"

	01-02-2003 01:17									#9
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Fine retort by the editors.

But be careful of using too much HRW's info: they are not very popular here in Poly, it seems.

	01-02-2003 01:23									#10
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The New yorker Article

	01-02-2003 01:26									#11
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Note what the articel says about the Iranians

"After the Iraqi bombardment subsided, the Iranians managed to retake Halabja, and they evacuated many of the sick, including Nasreen and the others in her family, to hospitals in Tehran.

Nasreen was blind for twenty days. "I was thinking the whole time, Where is my family? But I was blind. I couldn't do anything. I asked my husband about my mother, but he said he didn't know anything. He was looking in hospitals, he said. He was avoiding the question."

The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the equivalent of the Red Cross, began compiling books of photographs, pictures of the dead in Halabja. "The Red Crescent has an album of the people who were buried in Iran," Nasreen said. "And we found my mother in one of the albums." Her father, she discovered, was alive but permanently blinded. Five of her siblings, including Rangeen, had died."

	01-02-2003 01:30									#12
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Note what the articel says about the Iranians

"After the Iraqi bombardment subsided, the Iranians managed to retake Halabja, and they evacuated many of the sick, including Nasreen and the others in her family, to hospitals in Tehran.

Nasreen was blind for twenty days. "I was thinking the whole time, Where is my family? But I was blind. I couldn't do anything. I asked my husband about my mother, but he said he didn't know anything. He was looking in hospitals, he said. He was avoiding the question."

The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the equivalent of the Red Cross, began compiling books of photographs, pictures of the dead in Halabja. "The Red Crescent has an album of the people who were buried in Iran," Nasreen said. "And we found my mother in one of the albums." Her father, she discovered, was alive but permanently blinded. Five of her siblings, including Rangeen, had die

	01-02-2003 01:31									#13
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Western cover-up

"Attempts by Congress in 1988 to impose sanctions on Iraq were stifled by the Reagan and Bush Administrations, and the story of Saddam's surviving victims might have vanished completely had it not been for the reporting of people like Randal and the work of a British documentary filmmaker named Gwynne Roberts, who, after hearing stories about a sudden spike in the incidence of birth defects and cancers, not only in Halabja but also in other parts of Kurdistan, had made some disturbing films on the subject. However, no Western government or United Nations agency took up the cause."

	01-02-2003 01:32									#14
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he charge is supported by others. An Iraqi defector, Khidhir Hamza, who is the former director of Saddam's nuclear-weapons program, told me earlier this year that before the attack on Halabja military doctors had mapped the city, and that afterward they entered it wearing protective clothing, in order to study the dispersal of the dead. "These were field tests, an experiment on a town," Hamza told me. He said that he had direct knowledge of the Army's procedures that day in Halabja. "The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions such as 'How far are the dead from the cannisters?' "

	01-02-2003 01:34									#15
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I hope this helped.

You can argue that halabja is not casus belli.
Or that Saddam presents no threat to the West.
Or that the US is hypocritical.

But to argue that the Iraqis didnt do this IS close to holocaust denial. That large numbers of "peace" sites copy this drivel only calls their own moral integrity into question.

	01-02-2003 01:35									#16
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The real question is; why is gassing villagers morally worse than shooting them, blowing them up or incinerating them?

	01-02-2003 01:45									#17
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I read the article: wordy, as all New Yorker pieces are.

I would agree that the piece makes a better case about Habjala than Pelletiere.

The wonders of dialogue: ask a question, get an answer, and you know more at the end than at the beginning.

I still think calling it "Holocaust denial" is hyperbole. After all, questioning their role in habjala is not the same as denying the rest of the campaign, carried out the old fashioned way, now is it? And as the article said, most people died in the old fashioned way. No one questions Saddam's overall campaign vs. the Kurds, not in the way people still question the the Turks actions in 1915.

	01-02-2003 01:46									#18
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quote: Originally posted by Sandman The real question is; why is gassing villagers morally worse than shooting them, blowing them up or incinerating them?

hows this

"Baban told me that the initial results of the Halabja Medical Institute-sponsored survey show abnormally high rates of many diseases. He said that he compared rates of colon cancer in Halabja with those in the city of Chamchamal, which was not attacked with chemical weapons. "We are seeing rates of colon cancer five times higher in Halabja than in Chamchamal," he said.

There are other anomalies as well, Baban said. The rate of miscarriage in Halabja, according to initial survey results, is fourteen times the rate of miscarriage in Chamchamal; rates of infertility among men and women in the affected population are many times higher than normal. "We're finding Hiroshima levels of sterility," he said.

	01-02-2003 01:49									#19
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Turkey does the same to its Kurds.
Iraq's not really that special.

But some odd balls claim that Turkey's burning of kurdish villages is allegendly more humane that Iraq's.

	01-02-2003 01:53									#20
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quote: Originally posted by GePap I read the article: wordy, as all New Yorker pieces are. I would agree that the piece makes a better case about Habjala than Pelletiere. The wonders of dialogue: ask a question, get an answer, and you know more at the end than at the beginning. I still think calling it "Holocaust denial" is hyperbole. After all, questioning their role in habjala is not the same as denying the rest of the campaign, carried out the old fashioned way, now is it? And as the article said, most people died in the old fashioned way. No one questions Saddam's overall campaign vs. the Kurds, not in the way people still question the the Turks actions in 1915.

And folks who deny what happened at Treblinka arent denying what was done by the Sonderkommandos, now are they. Give me a break.

Arguably this denial is worse. Hitler is dead and buried. Saddam isnt.

	01-02-2003 01:57									#21
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by the way the fact that this appeared in the New york Times is - well, disgusting. Howel Raines is pulling out the stops evidently. This is far worse than anything hes done thus far. This will break Raines, or the Times, I predict.

	01-02-2003 02:00									#22
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I have yet to read someone make the arguments that Treblinka didn't happen but the Soderkommandoes did.

Does Pelletiere (or anyone else) deny all the other cases of regular slaughter by the Iraqis in Kurdistan? If he does, then your annaolygy has some validity. If he doesn't, then your treblinka-Sonderkommando argument is just trite. May I add that if we accept HRW's numbers of 50-100K, then very sadly, what Saddam did in northern Iraq counts among the world's middle campaigns of genocide in the last 50 years: not among its greatest.

	01-02-2003 02:02									#23
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Fair enough about the after effects of the gas, but there are conventional weapons that have similar long-lasting effects. Depleted uranium weapons cause dreadful pollution, whilst landmines continue to maim for decades afterwards.

	01-02-2003 02:17									#24
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quote: Originally posted by GePap I have yet to read someone make the arguments that Treblinka didn't happen but the Soderkommandoes did.

The usual tactic is to deny Treblinka and ignore everything else. Treblinka was a death camp only - not a death/work camp like Auschwitz. Ergo hardly any survivors. Ergo easier to make the deniers case.

	01-02-2003 02:22									#25
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quote: Originally posted by GePap I have yet to read someone make the arguments that Treblinka didn't happen but the Soderkommandoes did. Does Pelletiere (or anyone else) deny all the other cases of regular slaughter by the Iraqis in Kurdistan? If he does, then your annaolygy has some validity. If he doesn't, then your treblinka-Sonderkommando argument is just trite. May I add that if we accept HRW's numbers of 50-100K, then very sadly, what Saddam did in northern Iraq counts among the world's middle campaigns of genocide in the last 50 years: not among its greatest.

Clearly the scale of the atrocity is different - i wouldnt deny that the holocaust is unique - in fact i would assert that fact against those who relativize it (and not just on grunds of scale)

But the moral issue of memory and denial is paralell.

" Several old women whose husbands were killed by Saddam's security services expressed a kind of animal hatred toward him, but most people, like Nasreen, told stories of horrific cruelty with a dispassion and a precision that underscored their credibility. Credibility is important to the Kurds; after all this time, they still feel that the world does not believe their story.

If you know many holocaust survivors, or have read much about the victims, you will recognize this fear - that what happened to them is too much for people to beleive - when the most urgent thing they want is for it to be known, to be remembered. There's much holocaust literature on this theme - i dont have time to look for it for you now.
"

	01-02-2003 02:29									#26
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quote: Originally posted by Sandman Fair enough about the after effects of the gas, but there are conventional weapons that have similar long-lasting effects. Depleted uranium weapons cause dreadful pollution, whilst landmines continue to maim for decades afterwards.

I know of no instance of a deliberate campaign of genocide using DU, comparable to Saddams campaing against the Kurds. (and as i am sure you know the effects of DU are disputed, as the effects of these gases are not)

And its at least possible to mark off fields where old landmines are suspected. Children tend to ignore such warnigns and die anyway which is a tragedy (and a motivator behind the campaing to ban landmines, which I hope my govt will take another look at) But its not teh same as the chemicals which leave a legacy in the body even when they are cleaned up, and which are very difficult to clean up, leaving a poisoned land.

	01-02-2003 03:09									#27
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quote: I know of no instance of a deliberate campaign of genocide using DU, comparable to Saddams campaing against the Kurds. (and as i am sure you know the effects of DU are disputed, as the effects of these gases are not)

If DU turns out to have long term polluting effects, then it is no better than gas, regardless of whether it's been used in the past or not, and regardless of whether it's used with the deliberate intention of causing long term harm. I'm not sure Saddam (and other military leaders) really take into account the aftereffects of a particular weapon anyway.

quote: And its at least possible to mark off fields where old landmines are suspected. Children tend to ignore such warnigns and die anyway which is a tragedy (and a motivator behind the campaing to ban landmines, which I hope my govt will take another look at) But its not teh same as the chemicals which leave a legacy in the body even when they are cleaned up, and which are very difficult to clean up, leaving a poisoned land.

Landmines are vile things.

But, you could concievably mark off chemical weapons areas as well. I am not sure if gas remnants are that much more difficult to clean up than landmines, as well.

If one of the worst things about gas is it's low chance of killing and high chance of maiming, would it not be justifiable to try and develop a gas which was 100% lethal?

	01-02-2003 03:31									#28
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quote: Originally posted by Sandman If DU turns out to have long term polluting effects, then it is no better than gas, regardless of whether it's been used in the past or not, and regardless of whether it's used with the deliberate intention of causing long term harm. I'm not sure Saddam (and other military leaders) really take into account the aftereffects of a particular weapon anyway.

Then why did the Iraqi regime work on (and stockpile) Aflatoxin, an agent that has NO short term effects, all of its effects are long term.

	01-02-2003 03:34									#29
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quote: Originally posted by Sandman If one of the worst things about gas is it's low chance of killing and high chance of maiming, would it not be justifiable to try and develop a gas which was 100% lethal?

Kind of academic when all chemical weapons that kill OR maim are already banned under international law.

	01-02-2003 03:50									#30
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quote: Then why did the Iraqi regime work on (and stockpile) Aflatoxin, an agent that has NO short term effects, all of its effects are long term.

This apparently reputable website dismisses the threat from aflatoxin: http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/bw_ii/b...20-%20Aflatoxin

quote: Kind of academic when all chemical weapons that kill OR maim are already banned under international law.

Yeah, but the reason they were banned originally is because of their maiming ability. Take away (or at least minimise) that maiming ability and you take away the rationale for the ban on chemical weapons.