Posted on 08/31/2002 12:10:41 PM PDT by Jolly Rodgers
Iraq and Poison Gas
by Dilip Hiro
It is suddenly de rigueur for US officials to say, "Saddam Hussein gassed his own people." They are evidently referring to the Iraqi military's use of chemical weapons in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Halabja in March 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War, and then in the area controlled by the Teheran-backed Kurdish insurgents after the cease-fire in August.
Since Baghdad's deployment of chemical arms in war as well as peace was known at the time, the question is: What did the US government do about it then? Nothing. Worse, so strong was the hold of the pro-Iraq lobby on the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan, it succeeded in getting the White House to frustrate the Senate's attempt to penalize Baghdad for violating the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, which it had signed. This led Saddam to believe that Washington was firmly on his side--a conclusion that paved the way for his invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War, the full consequences of which have yet to play themselves out.
During the five years following October 1983, Iraq used 100,000 munitions, containing chiefly mustard gas, which produces blisters first on the skin and then inside the lungs, and nerve gas, which attacks the nervous system, but also cyanide gas. From the initial use of such agents in extremis to repel Iranian offensives, the Iraqis went on to deploy them extensively as a vital element of their assaults in the spring and summer of 1988 to retake lost territories. At the time, even as the US government had knowledge of these attacks, it provided intelligence and planning assistance to the Iraqi army, according to an August 18 front-page report by Patrick Tyler in the New York Times.
Iraq's use of poison gases to regain the Fao Peninsula, captured by Iran in early 1986, was so blatant that the United Nations Security Council could no longer accept Baghdad's routine denials. After examining 700 Iranian casualties, the UN team of experts concluded that Iraq used mustard and nerve gases on many occasions.
Yet, instead of condemning Iraq unequivocally for its actions, the Security Council, dominated by Washington and Moscow, both of them pro-Baghdad, balanced its condemnation of Iraq with its disapproval of "the prolongation of the conflict" by Iran, which had refused to agree to a cease-fire until the Council named Iraq the aggressor (which America got around to doing in 1998!).
Contrary to its proclamations of neutrality, Washington had all along been pro-Iraq. It lost little time in supplying Baghdad with intelligence gathered by the Saudi-owned but Pentagon-operated AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control Systems) flying in the region. This tilt became an embrace after the re-election of Reagan as president in November 1984, when Iraq and America re-established diplomatic ties.
From mid-1986, assisted by the Pentagon, which secretly seconded its Air Force officers to work with their Iraqi counterparts, Iraq improved its accuracy in targeting, hitting Iran's bridges, factories and power plants relentlessly, and extending its air strikes to the Iranian oil terminals in the Lower Gulf. Under the rubric of escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers, the Pentagon built up an armada in the gulf, which clashed with the puny Iranian navy and destroyed two Iranian offshore oil platforms in the Lower Gulf in retaliation for an Iranian missile attack on a US-flagged super-tanker docked in Kuwaiti waters.
It was against this backdrop that Iraq began striking Teheran with its upgraded Scud ground-to-ground missiles in late February 1988. To recapture Halabja, a town of 70,000 about fifteen miles from the border, from Iran and its Kurdish allies, who had seized it in March, the Iraqi Air Force attacked it with poison gas bombs, killing 3,200 to 5,000 civilians. The images of men, women and children frozen in instant death, relayed by the Iranian media, shocked the world. Yet no condemnation came from Washington.
It was only when, following the truce with Teheran in August, Saddam made extensive use of chemical agents to retake 4,000 square miles controlled by the Kurdish rebels that the Security Council decided to send a team to determine if Iraq had deployed chemical arms. Baghdad refused to cooperate.
But instead of pressing Baghdad to reverse its stance, or face an immediate ban on the sale of US military equipment and advanced technology to Iraq by the revival of the Senate's bill, US Secretary of State George Shultz chose merely to say that interviews with the Kurdish refugees in Turkey, and "other sources" (which remained obscure), pointed toward Baghdad's using chemical weapons. These two elements did not add up to "conclusive" proof. Such was the verdict of Shultz's British counterpart, Sir Geoffrey Howe. "If conclusive evidence is obtained, then punitive measures against Iraq have not been ruled out," he said. But neither he nor Shultz is known to have made a further attempt to get at the truth. Baghdad went unpunished.
That is where the matter rested for fourteen years--until "gassing his own people" became a catchy slogan to demonize Saddam in the popular American imagination.
Nations are often forced to deal with bad men, for very good reasons.
Does the author have a clue as to what our relationship with Iran was at the time?
I would agree, as well.
However, nobody has suggested that Saddam's use of poison gas during the Iran/Iraq war constitutes a casus belli today.
What has been suggested is that, having used poison gas in the past, Saddam is crazy enough to use poison gas again. Or worse...
The author's argument is a non sequitor.
I believe they point out what hypocrites we are in selective condemnation of Saddam’s use of chemical weapons. Something that wasn’t such a big deal in 1988 all of a sudden becomes a matter of international significance. Where were the humanitarians and their war drums then?
I would say, no.
This administration wants to attack Iraq. They want the US population to support that action. However, they either do not want to, or can't, provide a valid justification for such action. At the same time, the administration goes out of its way to declare its support of the nation most directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on America, and I'm not talking about Afghanistan.
Bush has a hard-on for Saddam and it looks to me to be financially justified, but not morally justified. I would like to know we are killing people for a just reason before we embark on that path.
Of course. The Left blames the United States for ALL evil in the world, whether we supported the people who did it or opposed them.
If we supported them, they say, "See. We supported them so it is our fault." If we opposed them, as in the case of the Khmer Rouge, they say, "See. We opposed them and made them angry. That is why they did this. So it is our fault."
The atrocities committed by Stalin are our fault because we sent troops to Russia in 1917 to oppose the communists. The tyranny of Castro is our fault because we embargo Cuba.
The tyranny of Samoza in Nicargaua was our fault because we supported him. The tyranny of the Sandinistas was our fault because we supported the Contras.
Saddam Hussein is our fault because we supported Iraq against Iran. Ayatolla Khomeini was our fault because we supported the Shah.
Do you get the picture?
What is of interest is whether we are justified to initiate war against Iraq today. Perhaps we are, but the burden rests upon the Bush administration to present the evidence and make its case. So far it has been innuendo and vague hints. That's not sufficient for a country that tries to be a moral force for good in the world. However, it would be perfectly adequate for an empire established through brutal application of raw brute force. It's time we decided which we are and quit mixing it up.
Where do you think the anthrax came from?
What do you mean it wasn't a big deal? It was a huge deal.
There was a major escalation of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. Iraq began using chemical weapons and Iran began randomly attacking ships in the Persian Gulf. Our fear that the escalation in the war would drag third countries into the battle led the US to re-flag the Kuwaiti tanker fleet and send US warships to the Persian Gulf to protect them. It was the accidental downing of an Iranian commercial aircraft by US Warships that eventually led to the end of that war.
Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it wasn't a big deal.
See? Now there's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. A couple of well placed disinformation leaks to the media and we've got the talking heads all running around speculating that the anthrax came from Iraq.
[Editor's Note: Although U.S. officials acknowledge terrorists were trained at Salman Pak, they say it is unlikely that these activities were related to the Sept. 11 attacks. It should also be noted that the two defectors interviewed for this report have been brought to FRONTLINE's attention by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a dissident organization seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein.]
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