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Iraq and Poison Gas
The Nation ^ | 8/28/2002 | Dilip Hiro

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.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: iran; iraq; kurds; poisongas; reagan; waronterror
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To: Biker Scum
No. I'm the fake Jolly Rodgers. The real one was cryogenically frozen and will be unavailable for two centuries. ;-)
21 posted on 08/31/2002 1:41:48 PM PDT by Jolly Rodgers
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To: Jolly Rodgers
The Iraqui Connection by David Rose, The Observer
22 posted on 08/31/2002 1:43:41 PM PDT by jwalsh07
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To: Jolly Rodgers
LOL, what did you expect Bill Moyers to say? Read on.
23 posted on 08/31/2002 1:44:37 PM PDT by jwalsh07
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To: jwalsh07
Lots and lots of speculation in the media, but it is not the media who owes the American people an explanation and justification before sending our military to kill people in another nation. We are owed more than speculation and guesswork. The administration wants a war, so the burden of proof lies squarely on their shoulders to make their case and ask congress for a declaration. Or, we could just ignore the law and morality and just wing our way into empire.
24 posted on 08/31/2002 1:47:21 PM PDT by Jolly Rodgers
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Comment #25 Removed by Moderator

To: Jolly Rodgers
All in good time JR. I'll let you in on a secret. The Czech's have pictures of Atta and al Ani meeting n Prague. The POTUS has pictures of the 707 at Salman Pak. The CIA has solid information on Iraq's WMD program. In fact, their latest report even puts a number to the CB tipped SCUD's currently in Insane's arsenal.

When all the ducks are in a row, President Bush will present his case and that will be a bad day for Saddam Hussein and terrorists in general.

Just because the President has presented his case doesn't mean that evidence doesn't exist. Its there, it can be found on the internet and you're free to believe it or not.

26 posted on 08/31/2002 1:58:50 PM PDT by jwalsh07
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To: okie01
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?

He might point out that the US also provided arms and military intelligence to Iran as well.

27 posted on 08/31/2002 2:08:18 PM PDT by secretagent
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To: Jolly Rodgers
All that political posturing between left and right aside -- in your opinion, are we justified to initiate war against Iraq at this time? If so, on what grounds?

Yes, we are justified. The 1991 gulf war ended in a negotiated surrender, just as WWI did. The French and British would have been justified in going to war against Germany when the Germans began re-arming in the 1930's in violation of the Versailles treaty and history shows that they should have done that.

The situation in Iraq is analogous. Saddam Hussein is violating the terms he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War.

28 posted on 08/31/2002 2:11:59 PM PDT by Inyokern
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To: Biker Scum
Love your bomb making pages though!

Got a link? I seem to have, ehr, misplaced it. Yeah, that's that ticket. I forgot where I put those pages...

29 posted on 08/31/2002 2:19:06 PM PDT by Jolly Rodgers
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To: Jolly Rodgers
"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."

Who might they be?

Last I heard, the media was convinced it was a "domestic terrorist".

30 posted on 08/31/2002 2:21:55 PM PDT by okie01
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To: secretagent
"He might point out that the US also provided arms and military intelligence to Iran as well."

And why do you suppose the US did that?

31 posted on 08/31/2002 2:23:40 PM PDT by okie01
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To: Inyokern
That's reasonable. If he were to make strides to come back into compliance with that surrender agreement, would we lose our justification?
32 posted on 08/31/2002 2:24:22 PM PDT by Jolly Rodgers
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To: okie01
Last I heard, the media was convinced it was a "domestic terrorist".

They flip-flop back and forth faster than a RINO.

33 posted on 08/31/2002 2:25:23 PM PDT by Jolly Rodgers
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To: Inyokern
You forgot to add that we have almost 3000 reasons to adopt a preemptive policy rather than continue a reactive policy. It's shocking that some people still need to be hit over the head by a 2x4 before they'll do what needs to be done. Do we need 50,000 reasons to go after Saddam???
34 posted on 08/31/2002 2:28:54 PM PDT by mikegi
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To: mikegi
If you have evidence that Saddam is responsible for 9/11, then put it on the table. Otherwise, you are using the dead to advance you own agenda, and that's damned despicable.
35 posted on 08/31/2002 2:34:37 PM PDT by Jolly Rodgers
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To: Inyokern
history shows that they should have done that.

Defeat the facists and put the communists in power? Then Germany becomes allied with Stalin, a bigger butcher than Hitler.

No thanks, you can keep your alternative history.

36 posted on 08/31/2002 2:37:42 PM PDT by palmer
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To: Jolly Rodgers
I put evidence on the table, convincing evidence. You choose to ignore it. So did the Clinton Administration.
37 posted on 08/31/2002 2:40:54 PM PDT by jwalsh07
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To: Jolly Rodgers
If he were to make strides to come back into compliance with that surrender agreement, would we lose our justification?

Not strides. Complete compliance.

38 posted on 08/31/2002 2:43:39 PM PDT by Inyokern
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To: palmer
Defeat the facists and put the communists in power? Then Germany becomes allied with Stalin, a bigger butcher than Hitler

What makes you think the communists would have come to power in a French-British-American occupied Germany in the 1930's any more than they came to power in French-British-American occupied West Germany after WWII?

39 posted on 08/31/2002 2:48:27 PM PDT by Inyokern
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To: okie01
I don't know why the US gave arms and military intelligence to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war.

If the US just gave support to one bad guy to restrain the other, greater, bad guy, I could see some sense in it. But I don't understand giving support to both bad guys.

40 posted on 08/31/2002 2:48:50 PM PDT by secretagent
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