From: matus (matus@snet.net)
Date: Mon Mar 17 2003 - 17:23:34 MST
matus:
>You support the unconditional removal of Bush for something he
>*might* do but care not about Saddam who *has* done those things!
Amara - "I suggest to look at all sides of the story, gather information
from as many sources as you can, and not to swallow, hook, line
and sinker what you hear coming from the White House and from
American media. It might help to put Iraq in perspective
with what is occurring elsewhere in the world, too."
"Practicing a healthy skepticism especially with regards to what
comes out of the mouths of politicians and especially when the
alternative is some thousands/more precious lives gone might
make it easier to look at oneself in the mirror in the morning."
Amara,
I appreciate your comments and suggestions to indulge in a healthy
skepticism. I do, in fact, believe I do. I certainly do not uncritically
support everything the US has done, nor do I ceremoniasally criticise
everything it has done. My opinions on Vietnam, for example, are probably
only shared by .001% of the US population, but likely shared by a majority
of the former South Vietnamese people. But I retort with a suggestion to
heed your own advice. I meant to comment on this earlier when another list
member posted Stephen C. Pelletiere New York Times Editorial. Some cursory
googling reveals some interesting facts on the Saddam gassing the Kurds or
not gassing the Kurds. Simply googling until we find an article that hints
that Iran and not Saddam was resposible for Halabja does not, I feel,
constitute 'healthy skepticism'.
To start with, the pretty liberal French Le Monde Diplomatique
(http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn) relays the theory that Saddam was
responsible for the attacks, outlining a history by Hussain, and in
particular Hassan Al Majid's efforts to erradicate the Kurds.
"Hassan Al Majid's chemical experiments began on 15 April. They were
directed against thirty or so villages in the provinces of Suleimaniyeh and
Erbil and proved devastatingly effective. Hundreds died. On 17 April, after
a chemical attack that killed 400 people in the Balisan valley, 286 wounded
survivors set out for Erbil in search of medical attention. They were
stopped by the army and shot."
This particular article tells the story of a systematic campaign of attacks
and the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, with the incident at
Halabja being the height of the attrocities.
Note the west, including the US, France, and Germany did little about this
at the time.
Next I would point you to this article published in the Kurdistan Observer
(http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistanobserver/2-7-02-88-gassing-still-killing.ht
ml) It is made clear in this article that the Kurds are no fan of the US,
as the chemical weapons used were supplied by the US, the original event was
ignored by the US (note is was also ignored by France and Germany) and now
the US is using it as a rallying call against Saddam. This particular
article estimates ~7,000 died instantly in the attack on Halajba, and relays
that Human Rights Watch estimates that 500,000 to 100,000 people died during
the Anfal campaign.
Next I would point you to this page
(http://www.dbarkertv.com/pelletiere.htm) which details responses sent to
the New York Times editorial section after Pelletiere advertisement for his
book, er, I mean, editorial was published. The first response is from the
former United States Ambassador to Croatio, it reads:
"In 1988, as a staff member working for the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, I documented Iraqi chemical weapons attacks on 49 Kurdish
villages in Dihok Province along Iraq's border with Turkey. These attacks
began on Aug. 25, 1988, five days after the Iran-Iraq war ended, and were
specifically targeted on civilians. As a result of the committee's report,
the Senate unanimously approved comprehensive sanctions on Iraq. Between
March 1987 and August 1988, Iraq made extensive use of chemical weapons
against Kurdish villages as part of a campaign aimed at depopulating rural
Kurdistan. These attacks have been well documented by human rights groups,
forensic investigators and the Kurds themselves. Many occurred in places far
from the front line in the Iran-Iraq war. The Kurdish survivors of the
Halabja attack all blame Iraq, and many report seeing Iraqi markings on the
low-flying aircraft that delivered the lethal gas. While the most deadly,
the Halabja attack was *one of between 60 and 180 such attacks* that took
thousands of civilian lives."
Note again the reference that this was one of up to 180 such attacks.
The next response came from the executive director of Human Rights Watch
Kenneth Roth. it reads:
"Stephen C. Pelletiere writes that Iran, not Iraq, might have been
responsible for the 1988 gassing of Kurdish civilians in Halabja. Human
Rights Watch researchers interviewed survivors from Halabja and reviewed 18
tons of Iraqi state documents to establish beyond doubt that the attack was
carried out by Iraq. Iraqi forces used mustard and nerve gases, as well as
mass executions, to kill some 100,000 Kurds in the genocidal 1988 Anfal
campaign. The commander, Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid, said of the Kurds, in a
taped speech obtained by Human Rights Watch: "I will kill them all with
chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international
community?" The evidence is incontrovertible: Iraq is responsible for the
crime of genocide, committed against its own Kurdish population. The gassing
at Halabja was part of that crime"
The very site you linked for Pelletieres article has this link as a comment
(http://www.krg.org/reference/halabja/index.asp) These are the official
statements by the Kurdish Regional Government on the incident at Halabja.
It says:
"What happened in Halabja? On March 16th 1988, Iraqi jets bombed the town of
Halabja with chemical weapons. At least 5,000 people were killed and 7,000
severely injured. Fourteen years on, thousands are still suffering the
affects of the chemical weapons"
The Kurds, as I mentioned, seem to be no friend of the US, but are also
highly critical of Saddam (understandable, given his Anfal campaign was a
systematic effort to wipe them off the face of the Earth)
For brevity, I would point you to only one more article.
(http://slate.msn.com/id/2063934/) This particluar article was written in
response to Jude Wanniski's incorrect parroting of Pelletiers argument. It
is made clear that Pelletier only questions the involvement of Iraq in
Halajba in particular, note as mentioned before that more than a hundred
other gas attacks by Iraqi's on Kurds *also* occured, and even Pelletier
does not question these. This article states:
"Last year, Pelletiere published a book (*) that Wanniski seems to think
argued that Iraq never gassed Iraqi citizens. But as one can plainly see by
scrolling down to the portion of Wanniski's memo (*) that quotes Pelletiere
at length, Pelletiere's claim is that in March 1988, both Iran and Iraq
gassed the Kurdish city of Halabja, which they were fighting over.
Pelletiere's view-which is not widely shared by others-is that the Iraqis
used mustard gas, while the Iranians used a much deadlier cyanide-based gas,
and that it was this cyanide gas that killed most or all of the thousands of
Kurdish civilians who died at Halabja"
And
"Joost Hiltermann of Human Rights Watch is writing a book about Halabja and
other incidents in which the Kurds were gassed. He says that he's seen no
evidence that Iran used chemical warfare during the Iran-Iraq war and plenty
of evidence that Iraq did. Much of the latter is available online. Here"
Additionally
"United Nations reports from 1986, 1987, and 1988 confirm (based in part on
reports from Iraqi soldiers who had been taken prisoner) that Iraq used
mustard gas and nerve agents in the Iran-Iraq war and that these killed a
growing number of civilians. In 1993, Physicians for Human Rights found
evidence (*) of nerve agents in soil samples in the Kurdish village of
Birjinni and cited Kurdish eyewitnesses who said that one day in August
1988, they saw Iraqi warplanes drop bombs emitting "a plume of black, then
yellowish smoke" and that shortly thereafter villagers "began to have
trouble breathing, their eyes watered, their skin blistered, and many
vomited-some of whom died. All of these symptoms are consistent with a
poison gas attack." The March 24 New Yorker carries a lengthy account by
Jeffrey Goldberg (*) of Iraq's systematic gassing of the Kurdish population,
based on extensive eyewitness interviews that Goldberg recently conducted in
Halabja and other Kurdish-controlled areas in Northern Iraq. None of those
interviewed seem to doubt that it was Saddam Hussein's army that gassed
them"
(*) - links provided on source page
Finally, for an additional commentary on the subject see -
(http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0204/0355.html)
In summary, the MTV News Byte Claim that "Saddam Gassed his own people" is
clearly still true. There is some question about wheather Halabja was only
an attack by Saddam which intentionally targeting Kurdish civilians, with
Pelletiers seeming to be one of the few people that still believe this in an
apparent sea of overwhelming evidence, as suggested in the letters above.
But given Saddam's systematic effort to wipe out Kurds in perhaps 180 other
chemical attacks that were in no way involved with the Iran Iraq war, and
not even quesitoned by Pelletier, the trumpeting of this particular article
of Pelletiers as a anti-war trophy is clearly an egregiously incorrect
interpretation of the facts.
Regards,
Michael Dickey
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