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.
Nonsense. There were plenty of other parties in Germany. Where did the Allies find all the non-nazis and non-communists who ran West Germany?
……………//………… Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it wasn't a big deal.
Cool your jets Freddy. Just because you didn’t grasp the thrust of my commentary don’t start questioning my memory. Perhaps it’s your cognitive reading skills that need some fine tuning, doncha see? Now, that is a BIG deal ;-)
Brilliant, thank you!
That's a pretty immature attempt at the smear tactic.
The idea that a modern nation like Germany, which was very dependent on foreign trade, would have gone communist or stayed communist for longer than 5 minutes if it were not occupied by the Soviet army is highly unlikely.
That they might destroy each other?
Moreover, remember that Iran was part of the clandestine "triangular trade" that was supplying the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Inadvertently, the ayatollahs were helping us win a battle against Communism in Central American.
I'm sure the Nicaraguans would approve...
He cannot come back into complete compliance on his own. He can request that inspectors come in, but we have to agree to send them. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't really expect him to ever meet the terms he agreed to. He's had far too much success at playing games with us to quit now.
I guess my point is that when we lay the list of threats out and prioritize them as to seriousness, Iraq is not on the top of the list. However, there are some pretty serious oil/financial issues at stake there which I believe are what is kindling the motivation of the Bush administration, rather than security from terrorism for US citizens.
If we take out Saddam, it will get the ball rolling on Iran (which I think is a worse threat in terms of conventional terrorism).
BTW, you can take your Chomskyite "empire" crap and cram it. An empire would have nuked the entire Middle East by now. An empire wouldn't give a crap about civilian casualties. An empire would seize the oil fields in the Middle East instead of paying trillions of $$$ for it.
No question about it. There must be more than speculation and allegations in support of an attack on Iraq.
The administration doubtless has such proof. Otherwise, they would not be speaking and acting as they are. And they will share it with Congress -- and with us -- when the time is right.
Agreeing to inspections would probably be irrelevant to the case against him.
In all liklihood, our actions against Iraq should be taken in the light of self-defense...and in retaliation for an unprovoked attack with a weapon of mass destruction. I.e., anthrax.
Whether Saddam agrees to inspections or not is immaterial.
L
I'll grant that Saddam is sending money to the Palestinians to support their terror campaign against Israel. That is one damned good reason to attack him. As far as whether he wants to attack us, I would guess that better than half the nations on earth feel that way about us. If we are going to attack them for that, then all we've done is justify their feeling that way. You can assume anything you like, but it only makes you look like a fool. Is that really what you're shooting for?
If we take out Saddam, it will get the ball rolling on Iran (which I think is a worse threat in terms of conventional terrorism).
Agreed. Iran is a far worse threat. Iran has been killing Americans at least since the Carter administration.
BTW, you can take your Chomskyite "empire" crap and cram it.
You're just like the jihadis on Liberty Forum. You accuse me of that which fits you. Chomsky my ass. You fit in his camp much better than I do.
An empire would have nuked the entire Middle East by now. An empire wouldn't give a crap about civilian casualties. An empire would seize the oil fields in the Middle East instead of paying trillions of $$$ for it.
Your knowledge of history is grossly insufficient. Try reading a book. It'll do wonders for you.
Then what the heck are we waiting for. We don't need a whole damned war just to accomplish that task.
Abu Nidal had spent the last decade in Baghdad acting as Husseins personal enforcer before his "timely" demise.
Saddam Hussein had the motive to train the 9/11 terrorists, he had the means to train them and there is evidence from two Iraqui defectors that he did just that.
Let me ask you this. The Congressional resolution states that the CIC has the authority to make war on the terrorists responsible for 9/11 and for those that harbor or aided same. Do you agree with that?
I don't agree with that approach, but you do provide a method to the apparent madness. Whether the US had that in mind, I don't know, but it sounds better than anarchy in the administration!
As to Nicaragua, I assume you meant the US-Iran-Contra triangle. I would have voted no on that move, but it did have an arguable end justifying the means.
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