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Posted on 02/15/2003 10:25:37 AM PST by knak
HELSINKI, Finland (AP) - The Iraqi Embassy in Helsinki sought information about anthrax from the foreign ministry in October, Finnish media reported Saturday.
The query - reportedly lodged about a month before the return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Baghdad - sought suitable methods ``for the early detection of anthrax,'' the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper reported.
The request also concerned ``ways of protecting against anthrax, as well as methods, procedures and equipment needed for decontamination,'' the tabloid said.
Ilta-Sanomat said that the head of the foreign ministry's political division, Markus Lyra, confirmed the report.
``We did not answer it (the request) at all, and there have been no further discussions,'' Lyra was quoted as saying. ``It is not our field.''
``One wonders, whether it was intended simply for propaganda or similar purposes,'' he added.
Foreign ministry officials were unavailable for comment Saturday.
Click on my profile to get Dick Cheney's rationale. See if you can gainsay it.
Ten years on, and the human shield victims still seek justice
A decade after Britons were used as human shields in the Gulf War, they want the Iraqi leader in the dock. Gaby Hinsliff reportsSunday December 1, 2002
The Observer
The videotape made harrowing viewing. More than a decade after it was shot, Patrick Herbert sat down yesterday and watched film of the moment that would come to dominate his life. The short tape recorded his audience with Saddam Hussein: a gaunt and bewildered Patrick, who had spent three months held captive at gunpoint along with thousands of foreign nationals being used as a human shield during the Gulf war, was shown being solemnly lectured on why he was a 'guest' of the Iraqi dictator.
The British banker had been summoned to the presidential palace in Baghdad for the bizarre televised meeting as a propaganda stunt - prompted by the arrival of his wife Gwenette and nine other British women in Baghdad to plead for their husbands' release over the heads of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
'It is very, very easy to see how people come under his spell,' Herbert, who now works for the NHS, said yesterday. 'That meeting was extraordinary. Although we were sitting all around a fairly large room, and he was sitting at the head of it, you felt drawn to him. 'He has a magnetism, a charisma which in normal circumstances you would say was almost great, but was probably an evil charisma.'
At the end of the lecture, Saddam suddenly announced that as a reward for the wives' 'bravery in the face of the tyranny of Mrs Thatcher', their men could go. Clutching an official photograph album of colour snaps of himself, his wife and their six-year-old daughter with a beaming Saddam, Herbert was freed, his terrifying ordeal over.
Copies of the video and those photographs have now been turned over to lawyers attempting to prepare a landmark legal case against the Iraqi dictator. Britain's Attorney General is due to announce shortly whether he will allow a groundbreaking attempt by Indict, the pressure group chaired by Labour MP Ann Clwyd, to charge Saddam in the British courts with war crimes over his taking of British hostages during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
A legal opinion prepared by Clare Montgomerie QC, a leading human rights barrister from Cherie Blair's Matrix chambers, concludes the case against Saddam is 'overwhelming': the Prime Minister has requested a copy.
For Herbert, 57, and many other ex-hostages whose traumas have been revived by the prospect of another war with Iraq, it is the best hope of justice. He would rather see Saddam in court than toppled in a war risking civilian lives.
'I don't have feelings of vengeance. I just believe that it is part of the process of justice that he should be held to account,' says Herbert.
Like many other Britons working in Kuwait, he believed the British Embassy's reassurance that increasing Iraqi aggression was only 'sabre rattling' and stayed on through the long hot days of July 1990. When the shells began landing on Kuwait City on 2 August marking the Iraqi invasion, he initially mistook them for the noise of building work.
Herbert and a colleague went into hiding when the Iraqis ordered all Western citizens to come forward. But a month after the invasion came the knock at the door. 'I looked through the spyhole and saw 10 Kalashnikovs pointing at the doorway,' he recalls.
He was taken first on a gruelling 14-hour journey to Baghdad, then flown back to the airport at Basra to act as a human shield, living 200 yards from a fuel dump which would have exploded and killed his 10-strong group of hostages had it been bombed.
First came the terror: that subsided eventually into a constant, dull shredding of the nerves. 'You suffer from immense boredom, you are constantly on edge because everybody has a gun except you,' he says. 'I have heard hostages say they were never in any doubt that they would get away. That's just sheer bravado.'
The guards were sometimes kind, sometimes brutal. The Basra hostages were once treated to a bizarre party to celebrate the reunification of Germany, complete with barbecue and cake iced in the colours of the German flag.
Yet a fellow hostage later told Herbert he had been driven into the desert, blindfolded, surrounded by soldiers priming their rifles and convinced he was to be shot dead. Both men and women have reported being raped by their captors: beatings by guards were not uncommon.
Nor did release mark the end of their troubles. Reports of depression, unexplained flashes of aggression, wrecked careers, and broken marriages are not uncommon: there have been two suicides. The parents of Colin Blears, the little boy whose fear as Saddam ruffled his hair in yet another televised propaganda exercise became one of the lasting images of the war, have said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder - as did Patrick Herbert.
Maureen Chappell, who was captured with her engineer husband John and their two teenage children when their flight to Madras stopped over in Kuwait on the day of the invasion, says the drama deeply affected her children, who saw a Kuwaiti shot dead at the airport.
Her son John, now aged 26, is still finishing his degree after repeatedly dropping out of his studies: her daughter Jennifer, 12 at the time, has been divorced and is currently out of work. 'It has been difficult for them to settle,' says Chappell.
She too would rather see Saddam indicted than the West rush into war too hastily: 'I think all the shouting from America is not particularly productive.'
Clwyd has secured the support of more than 80 MPs - including Conservative backbencher Andrew Selous, whose brother was a hostage - for the campaign to indict Saddam and three other senior figures: his Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz; his cousin and governor of occupied Kuwait, Ali Hassan Al-Majid, better known as 'Chemical Ali' for orchestrating the gassing of the Kurds; and Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.
Clwyd is undaunted by arguments that there is no real prospect of them standing trial, saying that former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was indicted despite widespread scepticism, and faces an international tribunal. In the US, Pentagon lawyers are compiling evidence for war crimes charges against the Iraqi regime.
'Our QC says, short of getting Saddam to sign a confession in blood, there is nothing more the law could possibly require. When people are looking at alternatives to war in bringing about regime change then this is a very strong proposition,' she said.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
I'm going to drag some of your comments from the other thread over here if you don't mind.
"...Here, I think you miscalculate the nature of the threat from Iraq, and that explains our different attitudes toward the conflict. To be sure, Saddam Hussein is no Josef Stalin, and his miserable little desert bunker-state can't compare to the old world-bestriding Evil Empire. However, he does pose a threat. That threat is both tactical and strategic, and it centers around WMD....
Regardless of our differing calculations about Sadaam--my question is: Why Sadaam in particular? What precisely is it about Sadaam---who has been pinned down by the Anglo/Saxon airforce for 12 years--that makes him a greater threat than the North Korean dictator? Than the government of Pakistan? Or India? How about the big moo shu porker--China?
There is a great deal to be learned by the People of the world from the difference between the treatment Sadaam is receiving and that meeted out to North Korea. The rest of the world watches and remembers and calculates.
Most Americans do not even think about our destruction of Yugoslavia and our war against the Serbs anymore--except perhaps to repeat the nauseating cliche: "We fought for moslems and saved them from the Serbs so why don't they love us more?"
But what might the Leader of a small country who could, one day, find himself in the way of Uncle Sam's global plans--either intentionally or accidentally-- have learned? I'm sure you are aware, for example, that Sadaam Hussein refused to sign the GATT treaty--the forerunner to the WTO treaty. Kuwait, by the way, did not refuse to sign. But, I digress. Back to the learning process:
He would have learned that if he DOESN'T have WMDs, then he is dog dirt on Uncle Sam's shoe in any confrontation. If he hasn't learned that then he is a very, very stupid tin pot. It's what I would have learned. Isn't it what you would have learned?
Assume for a moment that Hussein has WMD, anthrax for instance. We are instantly checked--our power, our freedom of movement, our ability to take decisive action, our capacity to guarantee the stability of the global system--are all brought low.
Aside from my strong disagreement that this is so---tell me why anthrax in the hands of Sadaam Hussein in particualar so exorcises you? Why not the anthrax that is undoubtedly in the hands of the Chinese? The Koreans? Why are we so very diplomatic with those who have bragged about their WMDs and their willingness to use them? Forgive me, but I smell a school-yard bully.
A few vials of the stuff released into subways in 5 American cities could yield literally millions of casualties.
But only Sadaam's anthrax would do this? All the other anthrax in the world is harmless?
Hussein has a history of miscalculating.
An interesting comment given the number of world leaders he has outlasted in power. Given that the largest antiwar demonstrations in the history of Europe have just been carried out demanding that the US not attack him. Given that he lobbed scuds onto Israel and is still alive. Not bad for a miscalculator.
He has a Nebuchadnezzar complex a mile wide.
One of the great weaknessses of the modern West is the acceptance of psychoanalysis as a legimate means of understanding human beings. I sometimes do it myself for fun. But I never seriously calculate my actions towards another person based upon the modern myth of psychology. It would be dangerous in the extreme for a Nation to base its foreign policy on such a thing.
He sits atop a wobbly regime and must fend off the ambitions of dozens of rival tribal groups.
Sounds like the Democratic Party.
His theater of action is the largest oil producing region in the world and the home of 300MM restive Arab Muslims. This situation is unacceptable because it is neither stable nor manageable...
If we disengage from the chaos and choose not to try to manage anything what do you think would happen? How much time and treasure are you willing to expend to manage the unmanageable? When you look at our inner cities, at our government schools, our largest-in-human-history prison population, our massive debt-dependant consumer culture and our popular culture do you believe that we are the best exemplars of good managerial practice?
... not in the way the conflict with the old USSR was....
How true. We can no longer count upon fighting it out through proxies in the Third Word. The bad guys are bringing the fight to the Homeland now.
Now, if Hussein already has WMD, as The Great Satan rather convincingly argues, then this discussion (along with the one at the UN today) is moot. We are checked
Again, I ask why if Hussein has WMDs? Why not if the Koreans, the Chinese, the Pakistanis--or even the French? How about the Saudis? They have a lot of money. Is it conceivable that they have some anthrax stashed away in one of their mosques somewhere? Maybe in Beverly Hills?
...If, however, he does not have WMD in sufficient quantities to do us grave harm, then he must be stopped before he develops them....
Again, why must Sadaam be nipped in the bud, but nobody else? What is this strange obsession with Sadaam?
...But the threat is greater than even Hussein and Iraq. There are literally dozens of other petty dictators around the world who are watching this drama to determine their own next steps....
As I said, they have already learned the lessons of post Cold War history and have taken steps; logical, rational steps from their point of view. They were watching the behavior of the US Government in the wake of the end of the Cold War very closely--even if the American Public wasn't watching. We have to keep an eye on Michael Jackson's nose, after all. Instead of "giving peace a chance"--what ever happened to that "peace dividend" anyway?--we expanded NATO to the border of the Russian Federation and turned that formerly defensive alliance into an offensive weapon to settle a civil war in a small, poor country with no WMDs to threaten us and stay our hand.
If the lesson learned is that WMD guarantees one's survival and effectively checks American power, then we are in for a global arms race...
Yes, that is the lesson that even the most obtuse dolt could learn. It was the lesson that the United States taught them. I am always amused when people claim that our government schools are "failing to educate the children". Nonsense! The children are learning exactly what the government is teaching them! And so have all the those you refer to--in solipsistic, propagandistic fashion--as "petty dictators. They certainly don't view their concerns as petty.
Your assertion that we are in for a global arms race at sometime in the future if we don't stop Sadaam Hussein, is too hilarious to be taken seriously. What do you think has been going on for the last 50 years all over the planet?
There IS a way to end the threat of WMDs forever. But the only government on earth who could do that--OUR government--will never take the logical steps to make it happen....
Strange as it is to say (and think), I'm beginning to look back on that time with some nostalgia.
I'm looking even further back with nostalgia. But I think nostalgia for a country that does not view itself as a lone global superpower, or even as one of two global superpowers, has no place here on FreeRepublic anymore.....
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my question is: Why Sadaam in particular? What precisely is it about Sadaam---who has been pinned down by the Anglo/Saxon airforce for 12 years--that makes him a greater threat than the North Korean dictator? Than the government of Pakistan? Or India? How about the big moo shu porker--China?
The emphasis in the above quotation is mine. I placed in bold for two reasons:
1) I think the primary reason Hussein is so dangerous is because we have tried to "pin him down" for 12 years in a terrible policy of neglect, confusion, and self-indulgence. The Allies tried to "pin down" Germany for a number of years following WWI, too. And you and I both know that we have learned to call WWII was nothing but the inevitable second act of the Great War. Our failure to deal decisively OR generously with Iraq after the Gulf War has made a bad situation much worse.
2) I do not think we have been entirely successful in pinning him down. I think we have constrained his power and frustrated his regional ambitions, but I do not think that we have prevented him from putting the dagger to our throat. That dagger takes the form of anthrax, pre-positioned on our own shores.
So what you describe as an "obsession" with Saddam I believe merely to be a timed, measured response to the most immediate threat we face. There will be time to deal with the others...North Korea for instance. But not now.
Your assertion that we are in for a global arms race at sometime in the future if we don't stop Sadaam Hussein, is too hilarious to be taken seriously. What do you think has been going on for the last 50 years all over the planet?
I may not have been clear enough here. The kiind of arms race I am talking about involves little countries everywhere making a mad dash for the brass ring of WMD. Contrary to what you have said, this has not been the prevailing arms race for the last 50 years. For one thing, the Soviets and the Americans (when we were each "in charge" of our respective teams) didn't allow it. For another, the advantages of such weapons in a bi-polar, Cold War environment were not so obvious. This places us in the awkward situation of needing to create adequte disincentives to the acquisition of WMD...at almost any cost.
There's the doorbell. I'm off to dinner. My apologies again for the brevity of the response.
If France and Germany are somehow actually in on some bluff being played by Bush and Blair, and their roles are to play the spoiler's part in an international game of chicken, how on earth does that help us?
Or is Hussein actually emboldended by these public relations wins for the anti-United States crowd?
...where do the events of the past 10 days or so leave us? In a box, that's where.
Whatever is going on, one thing I know to an absolute certainty based on an entire career spent in public communications: The President cannot keep blustering about the use of force in Iraq for much longer without losing all credibility. And this warning is from someone who adores the man and campaigned hard for him out here in LaLaLand (Los Angeles) where campaigning for Republicans is tough business.
Soon — maybe another month at the outside — it will not be Hussein who has "one last chance," it will be a man for whom I would do almost anything: George W. Bush.
Bush doesn't bluster. He doesn't lie. He tells the truth. We will go in, unless Saddam is killed or goes into exile.
"...our largest-in-human-history prison population..."
Every time I see or hear this particular screed, I wonder if the person writing or uttering it ever heard of the Gulag, or Nazi prisons (death camps), or the prisons in Communist China today.
If one has listened carefully to the President, he has said over and over again that he wants UN support (approval), but that if necessary he will lead a "coalition of the willing." That essentially means Great Britain. It also means that the President long ago accepted the premise that the United States cannot act alone for a variety of reasons.
If, due to domestic political pressure, Tony Blair found himself unable to support George Bush, then what? Chirac's real target is Blair, whom the French SOB is trying to bring to heel so that France and Germany can continue to dominate the EU (and, at some point down the road, their hope is to replace the U.S. as the world's dominant power). At the moment, Bush and Blair are badly losing the public relations war. And I do mean badly. Trust me on this point as I know whereof I speak when it comes to PR. This hurts both of them, but Blair first and perhaps worse.
The United States would, in pratical terms, be going it alone if we went into Iraq without Great Britain. None of us on this forum should underestimate the grave risks involved should events transpire in that way. And I'm not talking about military risks, but risks from a possible French-led international coalition against us.
My point is that we cannot keep sitting around giving France and the UN time to come around. As the President, himself, said, time is not on our side. The President is soon going to have to make the choice of whether or not to go or back down.
I do not think Blair is going to pull out. If he does, he looks weak at home and puts Britain on the list of non-helpfuls (which I am certain Bush is keeping).
Keep this in mind: if we can monitor Iraqi phone calls, as Powell showed in the UN, what makes you think we can't monitor French and German calls as well?
I think everyone needs to look at the track record of this administration and have a little more confidence.
Have you ever looked around you? Do you think anyone besides a couple hundred freepers and a few thousand left wing agitators really even have a clue what is going on or what is a stake? As long as Joe Millionare keeps running, Wal Mart is still open and stocked and the Circle K is still selling beer and lottery tickets it will be but a blip in the continuum.
No specific communication would even be necessary. All the key players understand the forces that are in play here, the incentive structure, the carrots and the sticks.
As regards "strategery," understand that different players call for different tactics. Some players may be "in" and "on board," while others may be exploited to achieve policy ends in a more Pavlovian fashion, leveraging their known stimulus-response characteristics You see the same motifs recurring over and over again in the Bush "strategery." Consider three different aspects of the post-911 situation that he has had to finesse: the anthrax threats, the Arafat problem, and the issue of confronting Iraq. In each case, some kind of stall and/or misdirection has been necessary to avoid things going off half-cocked. In each case, leftist or anti-American forces have been unwittingly leveraged to facilitate the administration's objective. The anthrax cover story leveraged the liberal media's enthusiasm for right-wing villains, and left-wing busybody Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's fixation on the bogeyman of the "military-industrial complex." The usual suspects internationally (France, Germany) facilitated the almost imperceptible removal of Saddam's cat's paw, Arafat, from the world stage, and are now giving Bush the cover he needs to go slow over any military confrontation with Iraq. In each case, in addition to the useful idiots, there have also been aligned forces which having knowingly conspired in the stall or misdirection. In the case of the anthrax, this included, at minimum, the FBI's Operation Amerithrax and it's author, Dr. Steven Hatfill. Colin Powell played the Hatfill/fall-guy role in the Arafat strategy, pretending to be a great, hand-wringing advocate of a continued relationship with our erstwhile "partner in peace." Powell has played the same role with respect to Iraq. My guess would be that, while Powell has, at least for the time being, "uncloaked," he has passed the baton onto that old KGB man, Vladimir Putin. And Vladimir knows how to keep a secret. Notice how, even though Russia's position on Iraq is virtually identical to France's, there's not the slightest indication that has lost his faith in Putin.
I don't know whether the Schroeder and Chirac personally fall into the useful-idiot category, or the knowing-shill category. I tend to suspect the former at this point -- I think they're the Barbara Hatch Rosenberg and Nic Kristof of the big strategy. But it doesn't matter, so long as they do what we need them to do. And right now, what we need them to do is to make it look like Bush is fearless and gung-ho for war, while giving him the cover he needs to postpone this thing until we are good and ready.
From the AP via Yahoo News: "Millions Worldwide Rally Against Iraq War."
Partial AP/Yahoo News Caption: Anti-war protesters demonstrate near the United Nations headquarters, Saturday, Feb 15, 2003 in New York to protest a possible U.S. - led attack on Iraq, part of a day of global protests. The crowd stretched for 20 blocks along First Avenue...(AP Photo/Shawn Baldwin) [emphasis mine]
Riri, your point that most in the general public are clueless is absolutely correct. To the extent that they pay any attention to news at all, the vast majority of people only skim the surface of news stories. Their opinions are easily buffeted by breathless headlines, dramatic images, superficial talking heads, and malicious polls.
When you or I look at the photo above, we take the time to analyze it. Most FReepers are likely to notice that there are many signs and banners in foreign languages, including Arabic, but not one American flag. Central in the photo is a huge sign from the rabidly anti-American hard Left group A.N.S.W.E.R. You and I will notice, but the vast majority of the public will only notice a sea of prostesters from around the world on TV tonight.
We must never forget that Tony Blair (bless him) is the head of the Labour Party, a coalition of mostly hard Left dolts, many of whom were probably out among the protesters today. Blair could very easily wind up facing a no confidence vote organized by political enemies to his Left. Then what?
MY POINT TO ALL OF YOU IS THAT PUBLIC RELATIONS MATTERS A GREAT DEAL. In some ways it is even more important than careful war planning.
As for France, they did blind-side Bush and Powell. That's not my opinion, it's what every analyst on Fox News has been saying for the past 10 days or so whenever the subject comes up. It's what many commentators have said in opinion pieces. How have they blind-sided us? By actively and sneakily working to forge an anti-American, anti-British coalition with, among others, Germany, Russia and China to use the UN to tie our hands.
I know it's hard for Americans to even comprehend that it might be possible, but the very international instruments we have used since the end of WWII to keep the peace and foster global free trade could be turned against us. France could easily go the next step and begin seeking sanctions against us if we go into Iraq essentially alone. We would be — heck, we are being — painted as the aggressors; as the danger to world peace.
Please, my FReeper friends, you are all too smart and saavy to under-estimate the danger of losing the public relations aspects of this war.
I would love for us on FR to figure out a way to help this President. But first we need to recognize the very real dangers we face, not just from WMD, but from WMS: Weapons of Mass Stupidity.
Since the media, like lemmings, follow the Times, we will see more pro-war stuff from them. I can only conclude that Howell Raines was given a briefing and told to get on board.
I expect that pretty soon a few papers in Britain, as well as the BBC, will begin to change their tune. After all, the British are notoriously disdainful of the French. A few weeks of playing that asinine French foreing minister on BBC and Sky News, and we won't be having too many more demonstrations, I think. (I am only saying this half-humorously.)
You are right that there is a fine line to be walked, and the president is doing so. He came in at the nick of time with that excellent State of the Union speech followed by Powell's presentation, and support for the war soared.
I just think a lot of people are overreacting to the UN. Nothing was a surprise to me, since I expect little from that group.
At any rate, we will see the next act of this drama next week, and I expect all of us will be surprised.
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