Wed, 07 Jul 2004
Who gassed the Kurds?
It looks like Saddam may be innocent of
gassing the kurds..
Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defence
Fri Jul 2, 1:58 PM ET
Sanjay Suri, Inter Press Service (IPS)
LONDON, Jul 2 (IPS) Evidence offered by a top CIA (news - web sites)
man could confirm the testimony given by Saddam Hussein (news - web
sites) at the opening of his trial in Baghdad Thursday that he knew of
the Halabja massacre only from the newspapers.
Thousands were reported killed in the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in
Halabja in the north of Iraq (news - web sites) in March 1988 towards
the end of Iraq's eight-year war with Iran. The gassing of the Kurds
has long been held to be the work of Ali Hassan al-Majid, named in the
West because of that association as 'Chemical Ali'. Saddam Hussein is
widely alleged to have ordered Ali to carry out the chemical attack.
The Halabja massacre is now prominent among the charges read out
against Saddam in the Baghdad court. When that charge was read out,
Saddam replied that he had read about the massacre in a
newspaper. Saddam has denied these allegations ever since they were
made. But now with a trial on, he could summon a witness in his
defence with the potential to blow apart the charge and create one of
the greatest diplomatic disasters the United States has ever known.
A report prepared by the top CIA official handling the matter says
Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the massacre, and indicates
that it was the work of Iranians. Further, the Scott inquiry on the
role of the British government has gathered evidence that following
the massacre the United States in fact armed Saddam Hussein to counter
the Iranians chemicals for chemicals.
Few believe that a CIA man would attend a court hearing in Baghdad in
defence of Saddam. But in this case the CIA boss has gone public with
his evidence, and this evidence has been in the public domain for more
than a year.
The CIA officer Stephen C. Pelletiere was the agency's senior
political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. As professor at
the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, he says he was privy to much
of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do
with the Persian Gulf.
In addition, he says he headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the
Iraqis would fight a war against the United States, and the classified
version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.
Pelletiere went public with his information on no less a platform than
The New York Times in an article on January 31 last year titled 'A War
Crime or an Act of War?' The article which challenged the case for war
quoted U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) as saying:
"The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has
already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own
citizens dead, blind or disfigured."
Pelletiere says the United States Defence Intelligence Agency
investigated and produced a classified report following the Halabja
gassing, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a
need-to-know basis. "That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that
killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas," he wrote in The New York Times.
The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the
battle around Halabja, he said. "The condition of the dead Kurds'
bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent --
that is, a cyanide-based gas -- which Iran was known to use. "The
Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are
not known to have possessed blood agents at the time."
Pelletiere write that these facts have "long been in the public domain
but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they
are rarely mentioned."
Pelletiere wrote that Saddam Hussein has much to answer for in the
area of human rights abuses. "But accusing him of gassing his own
people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far
as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used
involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be
justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them."
Pelletiere has maintained his position. All Saddam would have to do in
court now is to cite The New York Times article even if the court
would not summon Pelletiere. The issues raised in the article would
themselves be sufficient to raise serious questions about the charges
filed against Saddam and in turn the justifications offered last year
for invading Iraq.
The Halabja killings were cited not just by Bush but by British Prime
Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) to justify his case for going
along with a U.S. invasion of Iraq. A British government dossier
released to justify the war on Iraq says that "Saddam has used
chemical weapons, not only against an enemy state, but against his own
people."
An inquiry report in 1996 by Lord Justice Scott in what came to be
known as the arms-to-Iraq affair gave dramatic pointers to what
followed after Halabja. After the use of poison gas in 1988 both the
United States and Britain began to supply Saddam Hussein with even
more chemical weapons.
The Scott inquiry had been set up in 1992 following the collapse of
the trial in the case of Matrix Churchill, a British firm exporting
equipment to Iraq that could be put to military use.
Three senior executives of Matrix Churchill said the government knew
what Matrix Churchill was doing, and that its managing director Paul
Henderson had been supplying information about Iraq to the British
intelligence agencies on a regular basis.
The inquiry revealed details of the British government's secret
decision to supply Saddam with even more weapons-related equipment
after the Halabja killings.
Former British foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe was found to have
written that the end of the Iraq-Iran war could mean "major
opportunities for British industry" in military exports, but he wanted
to keep that proposal quiet.
"It could look very cynical if so soon after expressing outrage about
the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms
sales," one of his officials told the Scott inquiry. Lord Scott
condemned the government's decision to change its policy, while
keeping MPs and the public in the dark.
Soon after the attack, the United States approved the export to Iraq
of virus cultures and a billion-dollar contract to design and build a
petrochemical plant the Iraqis planned to use to produce mustard gas.
Saddam Hussein has appeared so far without a lawyer to defend him. A
Jordanian firm is reported to be speaking up for him. But the real
defence for him could be waiting for him in Washington and London.
Posted at: 01:29 on 07/07/2004
[ / ]
#
|