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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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 Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 2:12 am Post subject: Putin said Saddam's Iraq planned attacks |
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I know this is an article from 2004 but anyway.
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Russia Warned U.S. About Iraq, Putin Says
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 19, 2004; Page A11
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that his intelligence service had warned the Bush administration before the U.S. invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein's government was planning attacks against U.S. targets both inside and outside the country.
Putin, who opposed Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, did not go into detail about the information that was forwarded, and said Russia had no evidence that Hussein was involved in any attacks.
"After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services, the intelligence service, received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests," Putin said, according to RIA Novosti, the Russian news agency. "American President George Bush had an opportunity to personally thank the head of one of the Russian special services for this information, which he regarded as very important," the Russian president told an interviewer while in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan.
A senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday that Russia has provided helpful information in the war on terrorism, but that he was "not aware of any specific threat information we were told" about Iraqi activities before the March 2003 invasion.
Putin's statement came as Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials are defending their statements -- made before the war and as recently as this week -- that Hussein's government had a relationship with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. Earlier this week, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
The question of Hussein's role in terrorism beyond Iraq's borders has become a sensitive issue for the Bush administration. The allegation that Hussein's Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, and the concern that it would give them to al Qaeda, were among the chief justifications cited by the administration for attacking Iraq. At the White House yesterday, National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said he would not comment on Putin's statement because it involves intelligence matters.
In January and February 2003, as U.S. and coalition forces massed in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf area, the Bush administration asked countries including Russia to keep close surveillance on Iraq intelligence officers in their countries to make certain they were not preparing terrorist attacks against U.S. facilities. The warning was based on what had occurred in 1991, when Iraqi intelligence attempted attacks on U.S. embassies in Indonesia and elsewhere as the Persian Gulf War began.
Administration officials last year said their requests resulted in intelligence from countries across the Middle East and Europe, as well as in parts of Asia and Africa where Iraqis or anti-Western terrorist groups were believed to be active. The intelligence-gathering operation was not in response to specific threats but was based on U.S. estimates that Hussein might respond to a U.S. invasion by ordering attacks against U.S. targets in the United States or in other countries.
Also immediately before the war, the FBI searched for several thousand illegal Iraqi immigrants who had disappeared while visiting the United States, officials said. Although most Iraqi immigrants were viewed as being sympathetic to the United States, authorities feared some could have been Iraqi agents or allies of terrorist groups.
After the March 19, 2003, invasion, authorities in Yemen and Jordan broke up plots by Iraqis who were preparing to bomb Western targets in those nations, and U.S. intelligence warned 10 other countries that small groups of Iraqi intelligence agents were readying similar attacks against Americans and other Westerners, according to U.S. government officials.
In his interview yesterday, Putin said: "It is one thing to have information that Hussein's regime was preparing acts of terrorism -- we did have this information, and we handed it over. . . . But we did not have information that they were involved in any terrorist acts whatsoever and, after all, these are two different things."
Two years ago, in an interview with British documentary makers after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Putin said he had personally warned Bush a day or two before the assaults that some kind of terrorist operation seemed to be in the works.
In that interview, as in his latest one, Putin did not specify where or when an attack was to have taken place. U.S. officials have said that the information provided by the Russians was not detailed enough for action to be taken.
Correspondent Peter Baker in Moscow contributed to this report.
� 2004 The Washington Post Company |
Yes there was no reason at all to believe that Saddam had WMDs and no reason to worry about them.
WMDs by the way were not the real reason for the war. Nevertheless... |
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Dome Vans
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| Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee do you really trust what Putin might say to you?
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| American President George Bush had an opportunity to personally thank the head of one of the Russian special services for this information, which he regarded as very important |
He heard what he wanted to hear to start the pre emptive strikes, but...
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| U.S. officials have said that the information provided by the Russians was not detailed enough for action to be taken. |
Hold on a sec, I thought it was reliable info.
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| Earlier this week, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." |
So no links there. What contact? possibly a christmas card, or an email. That's contact!!
Is this the same kind of puppet commission that has the people hand picked by the president. Like the Dr Kelly Enquiry in England which found nothing suspicious about his death, come on..
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| and said Russia had no evidence that Hussein was involved in any attacks. |
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| But we did not have information that they were involved in any terrorist acts whatsoever and, after all, these are two different things." |
No links here.
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| The intelligence-gathering operation was not in response to specific threats but was based on U.S. estimates that Hussein might respond to a U.S. invasion by ordering attacks against U.S. targets in the United States or in other countries. |
Think is is called 'fighting back from Iraq', kind of obvious if you're being invaded. Very vague and obviously in relation to an illegal pre emptive strike.
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee you've taken a step back here, this is showing that the Russians are playing with you. Saying one thing, but at the same time saying there is no link.
These two words don't go together. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="Dome Vans"]Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee do you really trust what Putin might say to you?
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| American President George Bush had an opportunity to personally thank the head of one of the Russian special services for this information, which he regarded as very important |
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He heard what he wanted to hear to start the pre emptive strikes, but... |
That sounds like about as much info as he had before 9-11.
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| U.S. officials have said that the information provided by the Russians was not detailed enough for action to be taken. |
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Hold on a sec, I thought it was reliable info. |
see the answer above
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| Earlier this week, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." |
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So no links there. What contact? possibly a christmas card, or an email. That's contact!! |
Why did the have contacts . Must have been to do chartable work.
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Is this the same kind of puppet commission that has the people hand picked by the president. Like the Dr Kelly Enquiry in England which found nothing suspicious about his death, come on.. |
Oh a conspiracy .
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| and said Russia had no evidence that Hussein was involved in any attacks. |
See the words Iraqi government in the article.
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| But we did not have information that they were involved in any terrorist acts whatsoever and, after all, these are two different things." |
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| The intelligence-gathering operation was not in response to specific threats but was based on U.S. estimates that Hussein might respond to a U.S. invasion by ordering attacks against U.S. targets in the United States or in other countries. |
In any case planning attacks in the US.
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Think is is called 'fighting back from Iraq', kind of obvious if you're being invaded. Very vague and obviously in relation to an illegal pre emptive strike. |
It wasn't illegal Saddam never gave up his war and his government was illegitimate.
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee you've taken a step back here, this is showing that the Russians are playing with you. Saying one thing, but at the same time saying there is no link. |
The Russians are friends of the US? |
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twg
Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...
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| Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 9:39 pm Post subject: Re: Putin said Saddam's Iraq planned attacks |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| WMDs by the way were not the real reason for the war. |
Well, yeah. That's why it was called a lie when they claimed there were WMDs in Iraq and it had to be invaded ASAP. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 10:27 pm Post subject: Re: Putin said Saddam's Iraq planned attacks |
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| twg wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| WMDs by the way were not the real reason for the war. |
Well, yeah. That's why it was called a lie when they claimed there were WMDs in Iraq and it had to be invaded ASAP. |
Well the US government really did believe that Iraq had WMD's otherwise they would have found another excuse for the war.
I think it is very likely that Iraq did send a few WMDs to Syria before the war. That is what some of Saddam's generals continue to say. But I don't think the few WMDS that Saddam had were a significant threat to the US. |
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Dome Vans
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:36 am Post subject: |
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| Well the US government really did believe that Iraq had WMD's otherwise they would have found another excuse for the war |
Yep, they believed this, but it turned out to be false. If you cast your mind back, they tried many other 'lies' that were all found out to be not true. Therefore there was no credibility for any reason after the first couple.
The US has their timetable for a war and were never going to change, with or without legitimate backing (the UN). They couldn't wait, that is why it is such a mess and everybody is now rightfully ditching the US and leaving them in their own mess.
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| I think it is very likely that Iraq did send a few WMDs to Syria before the war. |
There's no proof here. There never has been any proof before, during or after the war. If they suddenly find them now do you think that we'll actually believe/fall for it?
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee, you seem like a nice bloke, and respectfully you have your opinions but I find it strange that the body of evidence against this illegal war to be undeniable. |
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huffdaddy
Joined: 25 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:59 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| Dome Vans wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
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| Earlier this week, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." |
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So no links there. What contact? possibly a christmas card, or an email. That's contact!! |
Why did the have contacts . Must have been to do chartable work. |
The US and Iraq had contacts as well. Which did result in a collaborative agreement.
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Dome Vans
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:03 am Post subject: |
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Haha, I like this. It's amazing how the US changed their minds when it suited their purposes and Saddam wasn't such a nice bloke.
I'm sure they also reckoned that it was Iran that gassed the Kurds, then changed their mind when Saddam wasn't playing ball. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:52 am Post subject: |
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| huffdaddy wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| Dome Vans wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
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| Earlier this week, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." |
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So no links there. What contact? possibly a christmas card, or an email. That's contact!! |
Why did the have contacts . Must have been to do chartable work. |
The US and Iraq had contacts as well. Which did result in a collaborative agreement.
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Why did I know you were going to try this
Khomeni was a mass killer who was out to get the US and spread his revolution all through the mid east.
but thanks cause with this I can remind everyone what Khomeni was about.
Khomeini fatwa 'led to killing of 30,000 in Iran'
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By Christina Lamb, Diplomatic Correspondent
Last Updated: 3:55pm BST 19/06/2001
CHILDREN as young as 13 were hanged from cranes, six at a time, in a barbaric two-month purge of Iran's prisons on the direct orders of Ayatollah Khomeini, according to a new book by his former deputy.
More than 30,000 political prisoners were executed in the 1988 massacre - a far larger number than previously suspected. Secret documents smuggled out of Iran reveal that, because of the large numbers of necks to be broken, prisoners were loaded onto forklift trucks in groups of six and hanged from cranes in half-hourly intervals.
Gruesome details are contained in the memoirs of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, The Memoirs of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, one of the founders of the Islamic regime. He was once considered Khomeini's anointed successor, but was deposed for his outspokenness, and is now under house arrest in the holy city of Qom. |
[img][/img]
Huffdaddy it is morally right to fight against Bathists, Khomenists and Al Qaedists they are all fascist bigots . Anything that is done against them is a good thing.
By Huffdaddy the way your site whatreallyhappened is a holocaust denial site. and a 9-11 conspiracy site too.
Look who is on your side. Look how you have allied with though probably unwillingly.
You going on the road from being a liberal to being a moonbat.
Last edited by Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee on Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:06 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:56 am Post subject: |
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"Dome Vans"]
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Yep, they believed this, but it turned out to be false. If you cast your mind back, they tried many other 'lies' that were all found out to be not true. Therefore there was no credibility for any reason after the first couple. |
I really don't know what your a trying to say
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The US has their timetable for a war and were never going to change, with or without legitimate backing (the UN). They couldn't wait, that is why it is such a mess and everybody is now rightfully ditching the US and leaving them in their own mess. |
The UN wasn't legitmate backing. They were on Saddam's pay roll. Plus more than a few on the UN didn't want to see another enemy of the US taken down cause it would leave the US better off.
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There's no proof here. There never has been any proof before, during or after the war. If they suddenly find them now do you think that we'll actually believe/fall for it? |
That is what more than one of Saddam's generals say. Their testimony is evidence.
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee, you seem like a nice bloke, and respectfully you have your opinions but I find it strange that the body of evidence against this illegal war to be undeniable. |
The war was not illegal cause Saddam never gave up his war and his regime was illegitimate. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:58 am Post subject: |
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[quote="Dome Vans"]
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Haha, I like this. It's amazing how the US changed their minds when it suited their purposes and Saddam wasn't such a nice bloke. |
I'm sure they also reckoned that it was Iran that gassed the Kurd
why don't your present the evidence that Iran and not Saddam gassed the Kurds. Come on - go for it. I promise you that it will not turn out the way you hope.
Last edited by Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee on Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:20 am; edited 1 time in total |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:00 am Post subject: |
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| Dome Vans wrote: |
Haha, I like this. It's amazing how the US changed their minds when it suited their purposes and Saddam wasn't such a nice bloke.
I'm sure they also reckoned that it was Iran that gassed the Kurds, then changed their mind when Saddam wasn't playing ball. |
I just love how idiots post this photo as if it were proof of something sinister within the U.S. government.
Do you libs honestly think that nothing can change in a 7-year time span? And that was before the first Iraq war. You put a photo of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand and that proves what?
I seem to remember from my reading that someone called Neville Chamberlain from that never-at-fault nation of the UK bascially stuck his nose up Hitler's ass. Gee, did the UK change its mind after that? Why or why not?
Discuss amongst yourselves. |
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huffdaddy
Joined: 25 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:25 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| Huffdaddy it is morally right to fight against Bathists, Khomenists and Al Qaedists they are all fascist bigots . Anything that is done against them is a good thing. |
Then why didn't we take on Iran mano-a-mano instead of giving weapons to Iraq?
You can try to make comparisons with WWII, but the simple facts don't add up.
Khomeni ≠ Hitler
Iran ≠ Germany
Saddam ≠ Stalin
Iraq ≠ Russia
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| By Huffdaddy the way your site whatreallyhappened is a holocaust denial site. and a 9-11 conspiracy site too. |
Is that better? |
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Dome Vans
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:31 am Post subject: |
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US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds.
by Raju Thomas
Times of India, 16 September 2002.
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The repeated American propaganda weapon to rationalise the deaths of more than one million innocent Iraqis since 1991 through economic sanctions is that Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and against Iraq's own Kurdish citizens. The accusation is now being invoked to launch a full-scale American assault on Iraq. This claim of Iraq gassing its own citizens at Halabjah is suspect. First, both Iran and Iraq used chemical weapons against each other during their war. Second, at the termination of the Iran-Iraq war, professors Stephen Pelletiere and Leif Rosenberger, and Lt Colonel Douglas Johnson of the US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds.
In the first report they wrote: "In September 1988 - a month after the war had ended...the state department abruptly, and in what many viewed as sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemical weapons against its Kurdish population...with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred...Having looked at all the evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to confirm the state department's claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with there were never any victims produced. International relief organisations who examined the Kurds - in Turkey where they had gone for asylum - failed to discover any. Nor were there any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."
Regarding the Halabjah incident where Iraqi soldiers were reported to have gassed their own Kurdish citizens, the USAWC investigators observed: "It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraq-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemical weapons in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds." [The Iranians thought the Kurds had fled Halabjah and that they were attacking occupying Iraqi forces. But the Iraqis had already vacated Halabjah and the Kurds had returned. Iran gassed the Kurds by accident]
In March 1991 as the massive US-led attack on Iraq ended, I was visiting the USAWC to give a lecture on South Asian security and discussed this problem with professor Pelletiere at lunch. I recall Pelletiere telling me that the USAWC investigation showed that in the Iranian mass human wave battlefield strategy, Teheran used non-persistent poison gas against Iraqi soldiers so as to be able to attack and advance into the areas vacated by Iraqis. On the other hand, Baghdad used persistent gas to halt the Iranian human wave attacks. There was a certain consistency to this pattern. However, in the Halabjah incident, the USAWC investigators discovered that the gas used that killed hundreds of Kurds was the non-persistent gas, the chemical weapon of choice of the Iranians. Note it was the Iranians who arrived at the scene first, who reported the incident to UN observers, and who took pictures of the gassed Kurdish civilians. However, Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait in August and the truth of the Halabjah incident became inconvenient.
I asked professor Pelletiere in March 1991, when he thought their findings would come out. I recall him telling me that it would probably take about five years after emotions over the Gulf war crisis died down. However, the USAWC report of 1990 has been dispatched into oblivion. The propaganda that Iraq gassed its own Kurdish civilians is cons-tantly invoked by the media. It was reactivated by president Clinton in December 1998 to justify the further bombing and destruction of Iraq.
Meanwhile, estimates of the number of innocents who have died in Iraq from relentless American-dictated UN sanctions range between 1-1.7 million, including more than half-a-million children. An article in The New England Journal of Medicine, assessed through a study of monthly and annual infant mortality rates in Iraq that "more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991. UNICEF official Thomas Ekfal estimates that about 500,000 children have died in Iraq since the United Nations Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Baghdad.
If the US bombs Iraq, it is not the direct loss of Iraqi lives from "collateral damage" alone that will be the only tragedy, but the unseen and accelerated loss of lives of tens of thousands of more infants, the sick and the elderly from lack of medicine and other healthcare. Before the US bullies all countries into supporting its bombing of Iraq, major countries such as France, Germany, Russia, China, India and Indonesia should stand up in unison and say "no more [bombs]" to the sole superpower. |
Seems pretty comprehensive that. BUt, another one maybe,
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Former CIA expert on Iraq says Iran gassed the Kurds
With control over Iraq's oil and water, Bush can co-opt the region
The Bush regime argues along several lines in its frenzy to attack Iraq. We mostly hear the goal is to disarm Saddam Hussain of his Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The great fear is that Iraq will sell or give a WMD to al-Qaida or another terrorist organization for the purpose of attacking the US. No one yet has explained how such WMD are to be concealed and transfered while hundreds of UN inspectors are roaming everywhere and spy planes are watching from above. Still, such scrupulous containment is brushed aside by Dubya as "too little, too late." It appears that no amount of Iraqi cooperation and UN searching will satisfy.
When the argument for immediate disarmament by force wears thin, the Bush regime's focus shifts to the threat of the Iraqi leader himself. Saddam is so evil, it goes, that he cannot be allowed to continue in power. Early on it was admitted outright that "regime change" was Bush's essential objective; in later rhetoric that has become a fall-back argument. Saddam, the story goes, will inevitably do evil to the US - just as he did when he gassed his own people.
We have all heard the noble sounding speeches by President Dubya about how the US only wants democracy for the people of Iraq and will fight to win their freedom from the monster Saddam. The Bush regime's claim, repeated many times, is that in 1988 Saddam's revenge on a whole village of Kurds who helped Iran in the war with Iraq was to kill them with poison gas. The claim that the gassing took place after the war was over and after the US was no longer supporting Iraq is contradicted by expert analysis.
Note: During the eighties, the UN was concerned with Saddam Hussein's use of chemcal weapons. On 3/21/1986, the Security Council President, "speaking on behalf of the Security Council," stated that the Council members were "profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops...[and] the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons" (S/17911 and Add. 1, 21 March 1986).
The United States voted AGAINST the issuance of this statement.
Stephen C. Pelletiere understands that gas weapons are occasionally used in small wars and that the most important issue is not how the Kurds were killed, or even by whom they were killed. The issue with international significance is the reason they were killed, and his answer is that the Kurds were casualties of war, "collateral damage" in the jargon of the US State Dept. and media.
The powerful statement below (emphasis added), from the former CIA analyst, challenges the Bush regime's various rationales and disputes the "facts" presented to support them. Oil is on everybody's list of ulterior motives as the central purpose for the US rush to control Iraq. Pelletiere argues that another major reason is to control the scarcest commodity in the Middle East region: water. In fact, the meaning of the word "Iraq" is "land of water". |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:49 am Post subject: |
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It is about Stephen Pelletiere You know I was waiting for you to try this
Thanks .
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The New Republic Online
History Lessen
by Spencer Ackerman
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 02.04.03
It is by now a well-established fact that chemical weapons claimed the lives of over 5,000 Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja on March 16, 1988. It is equally well-established that responsibility for this atrocity lies with Saddam Hussein. Indeed, there is virtual unanimity among the dozens of journalists, government delegations, and international human rights groups who have investigated the matter that Halabja was the first frightful act of Saddam's Anfal campaign, a genocide that consumed almost 100,000 Kurds in all. Yet according to a chilling and incoherent op-ed published in Friday's New York Times, Saddam had nothing to do with the massacre after all.
The author of this revisionist account is Stephen C. Pelletiere, a retired Army War College professor who served as a senior Iraq analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency during the Iran-Iraq war. Pelletiere is the co-author of the 1990 book Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East, which concluded that Iranian gas, not Iraqi gas, murdered the Kurds at Halabja. In his Times op-ed Pelletiere recycles this argument, only this time against the backdrop of a second war with Saddam. He's no more convincing today than he was 13 years ago.
Pelletiere begins by reprising the usual facts--namely, that Halabja was the site of an intense battle between Saddam and the Iranians. He first concedes that Iraq did use chemical weapons, but argues that the Iranians did as well. The Kurdish victims of the chemicals "had the misfortune to be caught up in the exchange." Pelletiere then cites a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, issued shortly after Halabja, to support his conclusion that Iranian gas killed the Kurds. His evidence? The Kurdish corpses "indicated that they had been killed with a blood agent," which the Iraqis, "who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed."
But this claim is wildly implausible. First, interviews by international human rights groups with scores of Halabja survivors reveal no such confusion about who deployed the chemicals. Kurds who were outside their houses during the mid-morning attack "could see clearly that these were Iraqi, not Iranian aircraft, since they flew low enough for their markings to be legible," concluded Human Rights Watch in its 1993 report Genocide In Iraq. In any case, the argument for Iranian culpability neglects the logistics of the Halabja battle itself. The Iranians, who controlled the town on March 15, would have no reason to use chemical agents against the Iraqi counteroffensive on March 16, since the Iraqis retaliated with air strikes and placed no soldiers on the ground against whom such weapons could be used.
Second, even if the victims died of exposure to blood agents, this would be perfectly consistent with the claim of Iraqi responsibility. A 1991 DIA report, since declassified, concluded definitively, "Iraq is known to have employed ... a blood agent, hydrogen cyanide gas (HCN) ... against Iranian soldiers, civilians, and Iraqi Kurdish civilians." Nonetheless, it is far more likely, according to the standard accounts of the attack on Halabja, that mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin and tabun--and perhaps even VX and the biological agent aflatoxin, which the Iraqis were also known to possess--were the instruments of Kurdish murder. For example, Human Rights Watch noted that survivors excreted blood-streaked urine, "consistent with exposure to both mustard gas and a nerve agent such as Sarin."
Third, the 1988 DIA report Pelletiere cites to pin Halabja on the Iranians was not the end of the DIA's inquiry. The DIA's April 19, 1988 cable--a month after Halabja--took note of the fact that the Iraqis were already forcibly resettling "an estimated 1.5 million Kurdish nationals," including "an unknown but reportedly large number of Kurds [who] have been placed in 'concentration camps' located near the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian borders." This in mind, the far more plausible story is that Halabja was part of a concerted effort to settle the Kurdish problem "once and for all," in the words of an October 24, 1988 DIA report--by wiping out the Iraqi Kurdish population.
This brings us to the biggest problem with Pelletiere's argument: If the Kurds were legitimate battlefield casualties, why is it Saddam subsequently felt the need to slaughter nearly 100,000 more of them? Pelletiere writes that any other examples of Saddam's chemical deployment on Kurdish victims "must show that [the dead Kurds] were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary guards." But even if Saddam's goal was to root out traitors, it's inconceivable that all or even most of the residents of the dozens of Kurdish villages Saddam subsequently razed were treacherous peshmerga, or that Saddam believed this to be the case. Certainly the testimony of hundreds of Kurdish refugees, who have provided remarkably consistent accounts of the genocide despite being dispersed from Iran to Turkey, refute this. So does the fact that Saddam kept gassing the Kurds after signing the August 20, 1988 ceasefire with Iran, as Samantha Power points out in her 2002 book, A Problem From Hell. And in unguarded moments, members of Saddam's regime have given lie to this rationale as well. Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, entrusted to carry out the Kurdish slaughter, was caught on tape at a Ba'athist meeting in May 1988 boasting about the Kurds, "I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? *beep* them!" (Human Rights Watch believes the tape is mislabeled, recording a conversation that really took place in 1987--i.e., before Halabja.)
What's perhaps most infuriating, though, is that Pelletiere is now reviving his decade-old hobbyhorse as a cynical argument against war with Iraq. "President Bush himself has cited Iraq's 'gassing its own people,' specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein," Pelletiere writes. Considering the Bush administration's "lack of a smoking gun" in the U.N. weapons inspections, he continues, "perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his own people."
Even if Pelletiere had his facts straight on Halabja, his would be a noxious and dishonest argument against war. To begin with, it is an insult to the principled antiwar critics who recognize and condemn Saddam's record of genocide but who still oppose an invasion of Iraq. One such critic is Maryland Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen, who as a staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September 1988 visited Kurdish refugees in Turkey to determine what had happened in Kurdistan. Van Hollen's team documented Iraqi chemical attacks on 49 Kurdish villages, leading him to conclude that "at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, all evidence pointed to the fact that [Saddam] used chemical weapons against the Kurds." More important, though, Van Hollen grasps the distinction that eludes Pelletiere, which is that while Bush invokes the Kurdish genocide in his brief against Saddam, the president does so to establish Saddam's willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, not to argue that, as Pelletiere ludicrously puts it, "we go to war over Halabja." The only one fighting a war over Halabja, it seems, is Stephen Pelletiere. And it's one he'd lost before it had even begun.
Spencer Ackerman , a former associate editor of The New Republic, is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. |
http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=foreign&s=ackerman020403
]A 1991 DIA report, since declassified, concluded definitively, "Iraq is known to have employed ... a blood agent, hydrogen cyanide gas (HCN) ... against Iranian soldiers, civilians, and Iraqi Kurdish civilians.
Now what do you say?
Last edited by Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee on Mon Aug 27, 2007 5:00 am; edited 1 time in total |
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