A War Crime Or an Act of War?
By STEPHEN C. PELLETIERE It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: ''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.'' A War Crime Or an Act of War? By STEPHEN C. PELLETIERE It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: ''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.'' The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's ''gassing its own people,'' specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein. But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story. I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair. This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target. And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, 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. The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. 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. These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran. I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He 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. In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq. We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region. Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change. Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades -- not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein's Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies. All that is needed to get us into war is one clear reason for acting, one that would be generally persuasive. But efforts to link the Iraqis directly to Osama bin Laden have proved inconclusive. Assertions that Iraq threatens its neighbors have also failed to create much resolve; in its present debilitated condition -- thanks to United Nations sanctions -- Iraq's conventional forces threaten no one. Perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his people. And the most dramatic case are the accusations about Halabja. Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive regimes Washington supports? Stephen C. Pelletiere is author of ''Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Persian Gulf.'' http://query.nytimes.com
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The PKK: A Privileged Terrorist Organization?
Sedat Laciner Thursday , 14 June 2007 The PKK is a Kurdist and separatist terrorist organization. The U.S. and E.U. laws say that it is a terrorist organization. According to the British MI5 reports, it is one of the bloodiest terrorist organizations in the world. It means that there is no difference between Al Qaeda and the PKK before the Western legal system. The PKK: A Privileged Terrorist Organization? Sedat Laciner Thursday , 14 June 2007 The PKK is a Kurdist and separatist terrorist organization. The U.S. and E.U. laws say that it is a terrorist organization. According to the British MI5 reports, it is one of the bloodiest terrorist organizations in the world. It means that there is no difference between Al Qaeda and the PKK before the Western legal system. However the PKK has armed terror bases in Iraq under American occupation and propaganda offices in many E.U. capitals. The terrorist organization is probably the only terrorist organization that has satellite TV channel. The PKK’s Roj TV has been broadcasting from Denmark. It uses the Hotbird satellite. France and the UK had banned the previous PKK channels (MED and MEDYA TVs) after Turkey’s years-long struggle. Furthermore, the PKK controls the drug business and human trafficking in Europe, and all the money comes from this illegal business goes to the so-called media institutions. The PKK media in European countries make money-laundering, and the organization uses all this sources to finance its activities. The PKK has offices in Denmark, Belgium and in many other Western European cities. The US officials openly blamed the EU states of allowing the PKK propaganda activities in their countries. Kurt Volker, the deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs in the U.S. State Department, said last year that media channels belonging to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) in Europe should be declared part of terrorist organizations and must be closed down. Delivering a speech at a U.S. House of Representatives meeting discussing emerging threats in Europe, Volker labeled the PKK a threat to Europe's security. When we look at the past, we see that the PKK has always been a privileged terrorist organization in Europe. Greece and the Greek Cyprus openly supported the PKK activities in the past: When the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in the Greek Embassy in Kenya, a Greek Cypriot passport was found on him. The official documents vividly show that the Greece and Cyprus Greeks financed many PKK activities and they gave great political support to PKK terrorism. When the Syrians deported the head of the PKK terrorists, Abdullah Ocalan traveled many European states, including Russia, Greece and Italy. Many European politicians, including Germans, Italians, British and French, openly visited him though their own laws named Abdullah Ocalan as terrorist. When Ocalan arrived in Rome on November 12, 1998 traveling on a false passport, he was arrested. However he was never seen as a ‘real terrorist’ by the Italian authorities. For the ordinary Turks, the Italians simply protected him. They even did not fulfill what the Italian laws said. Ocalan requested that Rome grant him political asylum, and Italy did not know what to do with a terrorist. Now we see that the Turkish people never forget the Italians’ strange attitude towards one of the bloodiest terrorist in the world. Ocalan was not only a leader of the PKK. He had ordered and personally committed many murders and even massacres. His targets were not only the Turks but Kurds and even the not-loyal PKK members. There are hundreds of eye-witnesses for his individual murder crimes. Italian courts have ruled that, despite an existing international arrest warrant issued, Ocalan cannot be extradited to Turkey because the death penalty could be applied in his case, despite Ankara’s moves to remove capital punishment. This was the source of the great Turkish anger against Italy. Italy could put Ocalan to an Italian court, because he was a terrorist according to the Italian and EU laws as well. Yet the Rome Government could not dare to do as well. Germany had an existing arrest warrant for Ocalan, and Turkey hinted that it would accept a solution where Germany would try Ocalan. But the German government decided it did not want him both out of fear of terrorism and because of likely clashes between the Turkish and PKK militants in Germany. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder declared, "We decided to protect the peace of Germany." Germans preferred not to combat against terrorism. It meant that they only considered peace in Germany and they did not give importance to peace in Turkey. Thus the German Government, in spite of the existing arrest warrant for Ocalan and existing laws considering PKK as a terrorist organization, did not put Ocalan to a German court. Strangely Italian and German politicians argue that the both countries courts are independent and they have no tool to intervene their legal system. However we saw in the Ocalan case that both countries courts did what their Government wanted. German and Italian officials adopted the argument that an International Court should try Ocalan, ignoring the absence of an international body with the jurisdiction to try an individual like Ocalan. Italy could try Ocalan under existing anti-terrorism treaties, but Rome shown no interest in doing so. Ocalan was one of the most significant terrorist leaders in the world, with a legacy of untold carnage to his name. And he has lost his international backing, which is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the condition that allows terrorism to flourish. Yet as Tzvi Fleischer put it, “the response of both Italy and Germany was to do their best to make the problem go away, fear of revenge being their reason to avoid responsibilities they have under international anti-terrorism agreements”. (1) Ocalan then visited Greece and no Greek authorities captured or arrested him. The next stop was Russia and the Russians, who always complaining from terrorism, did nothing to arrest him. Finally Ocalan was captured in Kenya, Africa. He was in a Greek Embassy and his passport from Greek Cyprus. Turkish special team was assisted by the Americans and all of the Turkish media underlined the American assistance in capturing Abdullah Ocalan. The Washington clearly accused the EU states on handling the Ocalan case. The Turkish public has never forgotten the EU’s and the US’ stance towards the PKK and Ocalan. * American Double Standard? The American assistance in combating PKK made Bill Clinton the most popular American president in Turkey. The situation has shifted dramatically after the Iraq War. The PKK, which was on the US’ and EU’s terrorist organization list, established many terrorist camps in Northern Iraq. The US authorities first promised to remove all these camps when they invaded Iraq. Iraq was their responsibility and removal of the terrorists, including the PKK, was their one of the foremost tasks. However, the Americans simply ignored the PKK terrorists for the past years. The PKK established training camps, armed bases etc. They established logistic stores. They collected ‘donations’, bought arms. The drug smuggling and human trafficking were continued as financial sources of the PKK. Money went to the European PKK propaganda network and terrorist activities in Turkey. In 4 years the PKK reached 3.000-armed-terrorists under the American and local Kurdish protection. The local Kurdish political groups, namely Barzani and Talabani groups, saw the PKK as guarantee of their independence. Turkey was seen as the only country could prevent Kurdish independent state in Iraq and as far as Turkey was busy in struggling against the PKK terrorism, Turks were not able to involve the Iraqi policies. Both the neo-cons and the Kurdist groups in Iraq prevent Turkish approach in Iraq. Turkey was kept away from the Iraq policies. While the cost of the Iraqi occupation for the US has rocketed, Turkey has suffered from the PKK terrorism. The PKK used Iraqi territories to attack Turkish territories. The local Kurds and the US have done almost nothing to stop the PKK terrorists. Nowadays the American diplomats in Ankara hint that the US authorities did not promised to remove the PKK camps, which is not true. Imagine the American diplomats are right: American President Bush, Secretary of State Rice, former secretor of State Powell and many other Americans did not promise to remove the terrorist camps from Iraq. As a matter of fact, this would be the worse than unfulfilled promises. The PKK camps in Iraq have undermined Turkey-US relations. The U.S.A.K. Survey showed the damage: According to the Survey, 74 % of the Turks saw the existence of the PKK camps in Iraq as the ‘thorniest problem’ in US - Turkey relations. The US and Turkey are NATO allies and have been strategic allies since the end of the Second World War. Turkish people have all the rights to expect from the US to remove the terrorist camps from Iraq. At least the US has to demilitarize the PKK militants as it demilitarized the anti-Iranian groups in Iraq. *** To make it clearer let’s make comparison: If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the EU and the US today do, the Al Qaeda would have a satellite TV station broadcasting from Ankara to Western Europe and Northern America. This Al Qaeda channel would encourage violence in the West and always call for terrorist attacks against the Western targets. Turkey, in response to the Western governments would have said that Turkey was a democratic country and the Al Qaeda TV station should be considered under the free speech principle. If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the EU and the US today do, all of the radical Islamist terror organizations would have terrorist camps in Istanbul or in Izmir operating terrorist activities against Greece or France. If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the EU and the US today do, the IRA, ETA and all other terrorist organizations would have offices in Ankara and they would declare war against the US, UK or Spain. If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the EU and the US today do, Ankara Government would have allowed the terrorist organization to collect donations, to make drug smuggling and money laundering in Turkey. If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the US today do, all Iraqi insurgents had camps in Turkey and they would use Turkish territories to attack the American targets… NOTES: (1) Tzvi Fleischer, “Apo-calypse Now, What can you do with a problem like Abdullah?”, AIJAC, 4 - 31 December 1998, http://turkishweekly.net
Sedat Laciner Thursday , 14 June 2007 The PKK is a Kurdist and separatist terrorist organization. The U.S. and E.U. laws say that it is a terrorist organization. According to the British MI5 reports, it is one of the bloodiest terrorist organizations in the world. It means that there is no difference between Al Qaeda and the PKK before the Western legal system. The PKK: A Privileged Terrorist Organization? Sedat Laciner Thursday , 14 June 2007 The PKK is a Kurdist and separatist terrorist organization. The U.S. and E.U. laws say that it is a terrorist organization. According to the British MI5 reports, it is one of the bloodiest terrorist organizations in the world. It means that there is no difference between Al Qaeda and the PKK before the Western legal system. However the PKK has armed terror bases in Iraq under American occupation and propaganda offices in many E.U. capitals. The terrorist organization is probably the only terrorist organization that has satellite TV channel. The PKK’s Roj TV has been broadcasting from Denmark. It uses the Hotbird satellite. France and the UK had banned the previous PKK channels (MED and MEDYA TVs) after Turkey’s years-long struggle. Furthermore, the PKK controls the drug business and human trafficking in Europe, and all the money comes from this illegal business goes to the so-called media institutions. The PKK media in European countries make money-laundering, and the organization uses all this sources to finance its activities. The PKK has offices in Denmark, Belgium and in many other Western European cities. The US officials openly blamed the EU states of allowing the PKK propaganda activities in their countries. Kurt Volker, the deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs in the U.S. State Department, said last year that media channels belonging to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) in Europe should be declared part of terrorist organizations and must be closed down. Delivering a speech at a U.S. House of Representatives meeting discussing emerging threats in Europe, Volker labeled the PKK a threat to Europe's security. When we look at the past, we see that the PKK has always been a privileged terrorist organization in Europe. Greece and the Greek Cyprus openly supported the PKK activities in the past: When the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in the Greek Embassy in Kenya, a Greek Cypriot passport was found on him. The official documents vividly show that the Greece and Cyprus Greeks financed many PKK activities and they gave great political support to PKK terrorism. When the Syrians deported the head of the PKK terrorists, Abdullah Ocalan traveled many European states, including Russia, Greece and Italy. Many European politicians, including Germans, Italians, British and French, openly visited him though their own laws named Abdullah Ocalan as terrorist. When Ocalan arrived in Rome on November 12, 1998 traveling on a false passport, he was arrested. However he was never seen as a ‘real terrorist’ by the Italian authorities. For the ordinary Turks, the Italians simply protected him. They even did not fulfill what the Italian laws said. Ocalan requested that Rome grant him political asylum, and Italy did not know what to do with a terrorist. Now we see that the Turkish people never forget the Italians’ strange attitude towards one of the bloodiest terrorist in the world. Ocalan was not only a leader of the PKK. He had ordered and personally committed many murders and even massacres. His targets were not only the Turks but Kurds and even the not-loyal PKK members. There are hundreds of eye-witnesses for his individual murder crimes. Italian courts have ruled that, despite an existing international arrest warrant issued, Ocalan cannot be extradited to Turkey because the death penalty could be applied in his case, despite Ankara’s moves to remove capital punishment. This was the source of the great Turkish anger against Italy. Italy could put Ocalan to an Italian court, because he was a terrorist according to the Italian and EU laws as well. Yet the Rome Government could not dare to do as well. Germany had an existing arrest warrant for Ocalan, and Turkey hinted that it would accept a solution where Germany would try Ocalan. But the German government decided it did not want him both out of fear of terrorism and because of likely clashes between the Turkish and PKK militants in Germany. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder declared, "We decided to protect the peace of Germany." Germans preferred not to combat against terrorism. It meant that they only considered peace in Germany and they did not give importance to peace in Turkey. Thus the German Government, in spite of the existing arrest warrant for Ocalan and existing laws considering PKK as a terrorist organization, did not put Ocalan to a German court. Strangely Italian and German politicians argue that the both countries courts are independent and they have no tool to intervene their legal system. However we saw in the Ocalan case that both countries courts did what their Government wanted. German and Italian officials adopted the argument that an International Court should try Ocalan, ignoring the absence of an international body with the jurisdiction to try an individual like Ocalan. Italy could try Ocalan under existing anti-terrorism treaties, but Rome shown no interest in doing so. Ocalan was one of the most significant terrorist leaders in the world, with a legacy of untold carnage to his name. And he has lost his international backing, which is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the condition that allows terrorism to flourish. Yet as Tzvi Fleischer put it, “the response of both Italy and Germany was to do their best to make the problem go away, fear of revenge being their reason to avoid responsibilities they have under international anti-terrorism agreements”. (1) Ocalan then visited Greece and no Greek authorities captured or arrested him. The next stop was Russia and the Russians, who always complaining from terrorism, did nothing to arrest him. Finally Ocalan was captured in Kenya, Africa. He was in a Greek Embassy and his passport from Greek Cyprus. Turkish special team was assisted by the Americans and all of the Turkish media underlined the American assistance in capturing Abdullah Ocalan. The Washington clearly accused the EU states on handling the Ocalan case. The Turkish public has never forgotten the EU’s and the US’ stance towards the PKK and Ocalan. * American Double Standard? The American assistance in combating PKK made Bill Clinton the most popular American president in Turkey. The situation has shifted dramatically after the Iraq War. The PKK, which was on the US’ and EU’s terrorist organization list, established many terrorist camps in Northern Iraq. The US authorities first promised to remove all these camps when they invaded Iraq. Iraq was their responsibility and removal of the terrorists, including the PKK, was their one of the foremost tasks. However, the Americans simply ignored the PKK terrorists for the past years. The PKK established training camps, armed bases etc. They established logistic stores. They collected ‘donations’, bought arms. The drug smuggling and human trafficking were continued as financial sources of the PKK. Money went to the European PKK propaganda network and terrorist activities in Turkey. In 4 years the PKK reached 3.000-armed-terrorists under the American and local Kurdish protection. The local Kurdish political groups, namely Barzani and Talabani groups, saw the PKK as guarantee of their independence. Turkey was seen as the only country could prevent Kurdish independent state in Iraq and as far as Turkey was busy in struggling against the PKK terrorism, Turks were not able to involve the Iraqi policies. Both the neo-cons and the Kurdist groups in Iraq prevent Turkish approach in Iraq. Turkey was kept away from the Iraq policies. While the cost of the Iraqi occupation for the US has rocketed, Turkey has suffered from the PKK terrorism. The PKK used Iraqi territories to attack Turkish territories. The local Kurds and the US have done almost nothing to stop the PKK terrorists. Nowadays the American diplomats in Ankara hint that the US authorities did not promised to remove the PKK camps, which is not true. Imagine the American diplomats are right: American President Bush, Secretary of State Rice, former secretor of State Powell and many other Americans did not promise to remove the terrorist camps from Iraq. As a matter of fact, this would be the worse than unfulfilled promises. The PKK camps in Iraq have undermined Turkey-US relations. The U.S.A.K. Survey showed the damage: According to the Survey, 74 % of the Turks saw the existence of the PKK camps in Iraq as the ‘thorniest problem’ in US - Turkey relations. The US and Turkey are NATO allies and have been strategic allies since the end of the Second World War. Turkish people have all the rights to expect from the US to remove the terrorist camps from Iraq. At least the US has to demilitarize the PKK militants as it demilitarized the anti-Iranian groups in Iraq. *** To make it clearer let’s make comparison: If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the EU and the US today do, the Al Qaeda would have a satellite TV station broadcasting from Ankara to Western Europe and Northern America. This Al Qaeda channel would encourage violence in the West and always call for terrorist attacks against the Western targets. Turkey, in response to the Western governments would have said that Turkey was a democratic country and the Al Qaeda TV station should be considered under the free speech principle. If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the EU and the US today do, all of the radical Islamist terror organizations would have terrorist camps in Istanbul or in Izmir operating terrorist activities against Greece or France. If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the EU and the US today do, the IRA, ETA and all other terrorist organizations would have offices in Ankara and they would declare war against the US, UK or Spain. If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the EU and the US today do, Ankara Government would have allowed the terrorist organization to collect donations, to make drug smuggling and money laundering in Turkey. If Turkey acted against the terrorist as the US today do, all Iraqi insurgents had camps in Turkey and they would use Turkish territories to attack the American targets… NOTES: (1) Tzvi Fleischer, “Apo-calypse Now, What can you do with a problem like Abdullah?”, AIJAC, 4 - 31 December 1998, http://turkishweekly.net
Report Suppressed: Iran Gassed Kurds, Not Iraq
Report Suppressed: Iran Gassed Kurds, Not Iraq US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds. by Raju Thomas Times of India, 16 September 2002. Report Suppressed: Iran Gassed Kurds, Not Iraq US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds. by Raju Thomas Times of India, 16 September 2002. The repeated American propaganda weapon to rationalise the deaths of more than one million innocent Iraqis since 1991 through economic sanctions is that Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and against Iraq's own Kurdish citizens. The accusation is now being invoked to launch a full-scale American assault on Iraq. This claim of Iraq gassing its own citizens at Halabjah is suspect. First, both Iran and Iraq used chemical weapons against each other during their war. Second, at the termination of the Iran-Iraq war, professors Stephen Pelletiere and Leif Rosenberger, and Lt Colonel Douglas Johnson of the US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds. In the first report they wrote: "In September 1988 - a month after the war had ended...the state department abruptly, and in what many viewed as sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemical weapons against its Kurdish population...with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred...Having looked at all the evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to confirm the state department's claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with there were never any victims produced. International relief organisations who examined the Kurds - in Turkey where they had gone for asylum - failed to discover any. Nor were there any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee." Regarding the Halabjah incident where Iraqi soldiers were reported to have gassed their own Kurdish citizens, the USAWC investigators observed: "It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraq-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemical weapons in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds." [The Iranians thought the Kurds had fled Halabjah and that they were attacking occupying Iraqi forces. But the Iraqis had already vacated Halabjah and the Kurds had returned. Iran gassed the Kurds by accident] In March 1991 as the massive US-led attack on Iraq ended, I was visiting the USAWC to give a lecture on South Asian security and discussed this problem with professor Pelletiere at lunch. I recall Pelletiere telling me that the USAWC investigation showed that in the Iranian mass human wave battlefield strategy, Teheran used non-persistent poison gas against Iraqi soldiers so as to be able to attack and advance into the areas vacated by Iraqis. On the other hand, Baghdad used persistent gas to halt the Iranian human wave attacks. There was a certain consistency to this pattern. However, in the Halabjah incident, the USAWC investigators discovered that the gas used that killed hundreds of Kurds was the non-persistent gas, the chemical weapon of choice of the Iranians. Note it was the Iranians who arrived at the scene first, who reported the incident to UN observers, and who took pictures of the gassed Kurdish civilians. However, Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait in August and the truth of the Halabjah incident became inconvenient. I asked professor Pelletiere in March 1991, when he thought their findings would come out. I recall him telling me that it would probably take about five years after emotions over the Gulf war crisis died down. However, the USAWC report of 1990 has been dispatched into oblivion. The propaganda that Iraq gassed its own Kurdish civilians is cons-tantly invoked by the media. It was reactivated by president Clinton in December 1998 to justify the further bombing and destruction of Iraq. Meanwhile, estimates of the number of innocents who have died in Iraq from relentless American-dictated UN sanctions range between 1-1.7 million, including more than half-a-million children. An article in The New England Journal of Medicine, assessed through a study of monthly and annual infant mortality rates in Iraq that "more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991. UNICEF official Thomas Ekfal estimates that about 500,000 children have died in Iraq since the United Nations Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Baghdad. If the US bombs Iraq, it is not the direct loss of Iraqi lives from "collateral damage" alone that will be the only tragedy, but the unseen and accelerated loss of lives of tens of thousands of more infants, the sick and the elderly from lack of medicine and other healthcare. Before the US bullies all countries into supporting its bombing of Iraq, major countries such as France, Germany, Russia, China, India and Indonesia should stand up in unison and say "no more [bombs]" to the sole superpower. www.the7thfire.com
Report Suppressed: Iran Gassed Kurds, Not Iraq US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds. by Raju Thomas Times of India, 16 September 2002. Report Suppressed: Iran Gassed Kurds, Not Iraq US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds. by Raju Thomas Times of India, 16 September 2002. The repeated American propaganda weapon to rationalise the deaths of more than one million innocent Iraqis since 1991 through economic sanctions is that Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and against Iraq's own Kurdish citizens. The accusation is now being invoked to launch a full-scale American assault on Iraq. This claim of Iraq gassing its own citizens at Halabjah is suspect. First, both Iran and Iraq used chemical weapons against each other during their war. Second, at the termination of the Iran-Iraq war, professors Stephen Pelletiere and Leif Rosenberger, and Lt Colonel Douglas Johnson of the US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds. In the first report they wrote: "In September 1988 - a month after the war had ended...the state department abruptly, and in what many viewed as sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemical weapons against its Kurdish population...with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred...Having looked at all the evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to confirm the state department's claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with there were never any victims produced. International relief organisations who examined the Kurds - in Turkey where they had gone for asylum - failed to discover any. Nor were there any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee." Regarding the Halabjah incident where Iraqi soldiers were reported to have gassed their own Kurdish citizens, the USAWC investigators observed: "It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraq-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemical weapons in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds." [The Iranians thought the Kurds had fled Halabjah and that they were attacking occupying Iraqi forces. But the Iraqis had already vacated Halabjah and the Kurds had returned. Iran gassed the Kurds by accident] In March 1991 as the massive US-led attack on Iraq ended, I was visiting the USAWC to give a lecture on South Asian security and discussed this problem with professor Pelletiere at lunch. I recall Pelletiere telling me that the USAWC investigation showed that in the Iranian mass human wave battlefield strategy, Teheran used non-persistent poison gas against Iraqi soldiers so as to be able to attack and advance into the areas vacated by Iraqis. On the other hand, Baghdad used persistent gas to halt the Iranian human wave attacks. There was a certain consistency to this pattern. However, in the Halabjah incident, the USAWC investigators discovered that the gas used that killed hundreds of Kurds was the non-persistent gas, the chemical weapon of choice of the Iranians. Note it was the Iranians who arrived at the scene first, who reported the incident to UN observers, and who took pictures of the gassed Kurdish civilians. However, Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait in August and the truth of the Halabjah incident became inconvenient. I asked professor Pelletiere in March 1991, when he thought their findings would come out. I recall him telling me that it would probably take about five years after emotions over the Gulf war crisis died down. However, the USAWC report of 1990 has been dispatched into oblivion. The propaganda that Iraq gassed its own Kurdish civilians is cons-tantly invoked by the media. It was reactivated by president Clinton in December 1998 to justify the further bombing and destruction of Iraq. Meanwhile, estimates of the number of innocents who have died in Iraq from relentless American-dictated UN sanctions range between 1-1.7 million, including more than half-a-million children. An article in The New England Journal of Medicine, assessed through a study of monthly and annual infant mortality rates in Iraq that "more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991. UNICEF official Thomas Ekfal estimates that about 500,000 children have died in Iraq since the United Nations Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Baghdad. If the US bombs Iraq, it is not the direct loss of Iraqi lives from "collateral damage" alone that will be the only tragedy, but the unseen and accelerated loss of lives of tens of thousands of more infants, the sick and the elderly from lack of medicine and other healthcare. Before the US bullies all countries into supporting its bombing of Iraq, major countries such as France, Germany, Russia, China, India and Indonesia should stand up in unison and say "no more [bombs]" to the sole superpower. www.the7thfire.com
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