Did Saddam Gas his own people?
Some Critiques of Stephen C. Pelletiere New York Times Editorial

I posted this initially in response to AG's posting of Steve Pelletiers editorial questioning the role that Saddam and Iraq played in the gassing of the Kurds at Halabja, and subsequently bringing into question the pro-war rallying cry of 'Saddam gassed his own people'. I believe my response was lost to many who may have been interested in it from the innacurate title and my own verbose posting. So here it is again, with the summary first...

In summary, the MTV News Byte Claim that "Saddam Gassed his own people" is clearly still true. There is some question about wheather Halabja was only an attack by Saddam which intentionally targeting Kurdish civilians, with Pelletiers seeming to be one of the few people that still believe this in an apparent sea of overwhelming evidence, as suggested in the letters above. But given Saddam's systematic effort to wipe out Kurds in perhaps 180 other chemical attacks that were in no way involved with the Iran Iraq war, and not even quesitoned by Pelletier, the trumpeting of this particular article of Pelletiers as a anti-war trophy is clearly an egregiously incorrect interpretation of the facts.

Michael

-----Original Message-----

matus:
>You support the unconditional removal of Bush for something he
>*might* do but care not about Saddam who *has* done those things!

AG - "I suggest to look at all sides of the story, gather information from as many sources as you can, and not to swallow, hook, line
and sinker what you hear coming from the White House and from American media. It might help to put Iraq in perspective with what is occurring elsewhere in the world, too." AND "Practicing a healthy skepticism especially with regards to what comes out of the mouths of politicians and especially when the alternative is some thousands/more precious lives gone might make it easier to look at oneself in the mirror in the morning."

AG,

I appreciate your comments and suggestions to indulge in a healthy skepticism. I do, in fact, believe I do. I certainly do not uncritically support everything the US has done, nor do I ceremoniasally criticise everything it has done. My opinions on Vietnam, for example, are probably only shared by .001% of the US population, but likely shared by a majority of the former South Vietnamese people. But I retort with a suggestion to heed your own advice. I meant to comment on this earlier when another list member posted Stephen C. Pelletiere New York Times Editorial. Some cursory googling reveals some interesting facts on the Saddam gassing the Kurds or not gassing the Kurds. Simply googling until we find an article that hints that Iran and not Saddam was resposible for Halabja does not, I feel, constitute 'healthy skepticism'.

To start with, the pretty liberal French Le Monde Diplomatique (http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn) relays the theory that Saddam was responsible for the attacks, outlining a history by Hussain, and in particular Hassan Al Majid's efforts to erradicate the Kurds.

"Hassan Al Majid's chemical experiments began on 15 April. They were directed against thirty or so villages in the provinces of Suleimaniyeh and Erbil and proved devastatingly effective. Hundreds died. On 17 April, after a chemical attack that killed 400 people in the Balisan valley, 286 wounded survivors set out for Erbil in search of medical attention. They were stopped by the army and shot."

This particular article tells the story of a systematic campaign of attacks and the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, with the incident at Halabja being the height of the attrocities.

Note the west, including the US, France, and Germany did little about this at the time.

Next I would point you to this article published in the Kurdistan Observer (http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistanobserver/2-7-02-88-gassing-still-killing.html) It is made clear in this article that the Kurds are no fan of the US, as the chemical weapons used were supplied by the US, the original event was ignored by the US (note is was also ignored by France and Germany) and now the US is using it as a rallying call against Saddam. This particular article estimates ~7,000 died instantly in the attack on Halajba, and relays that Human Rights Watch estimates that 500,000 to 100,000 people died during the Anfal campaign.

Next I would point you to this page (http://www.dbarkertv.com/pelletiere.htm) which details responses sent to the New York Times editorial section after Pelletiere advertisement for his book, er, I mean, editorial was published. The first response is from the former United States Ambassador to Croatio, it reads:

"In 1988, as a staff member working for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I documented Iraqi chemical weapons attacks on 49 Kurdish villages in Dihok Province along Iraq's border with Turkey. These attacks began on Aug. 25, 1988, five days after the Iran-Iraq war ended, and were specifically targeted on civilians. As a result of the committee's report, the Senate unanimously approved comprehensive sanctions on Iraq. Between March 1987 and August 1988, Iraq made extensive use of chemical weapons against Kurdish villages as part of a campaign aimed at depopulating rural Kurdistan. These attacks have been well documented by human rights groups, forensic investigators and the Kurds themselves. Many occurred in places far from the front line in the Iran-Iraq war. The Kurdish survivors of the Halabja attack all blame Iraq, and many report seeing Iraqi markings on the low-flying aircraft that delivered the lethal gas. While the most deadly, the Halabja attack was one of between 60 and 180 such attacks that took thousands of civilian lives." [Emphasis added]

The next response came from the executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth. it reads:

"Stephen C. Pelletiere writes that Iran, not Iraq, might have been responsible for the 1988 gassing of Kurdish civilians in Halabja. Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed survivors from Halabja and reviewed 18 tons of Iraqi state documents to establish beyond doubt that the attack was carried out by Iraq. Iraqi forces used mustard and nerve gases, as well as mass executions, to kill some 100,000 Kurds in the genocidal 1988 Anfal campaign. The commander, Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid, said of the Kurds, in a taped speech obtained by Human Rights Watch: "I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community?" The evidence is incontrovertible: Iraq is responsible for the crime of genocide, committed against its own Kurdish population. The gassing at Halabja was part of that crime"

The very site you linked for Pelletieres article has this link as a comment (http://www.krg.org/reference/halabja/index.asp) These are the official statements by the Kurdish Regional Government on the incident at Halabja. It says:

"What happened in Halabja? On March 16th 1988, Iraqi jets bombed the town of Halabja with chemical weapons. At least 5,000 people were killed and 7,000 severely injured. Fourteen years on, thousands are still suffering the affects of the chemical weapons"

The Kurds, as I mentioned, seem to be no friend of the US, but are also highly critical of Saddam (understandable, given his Anfal campaign was a systematic effort to wipe them off the face of the Earth)

For brevity, I would point you to only one more article. (http://slate.msn.com/id/2063934/) This particluar article was written in response to Jude Wanniski's incorrect parroting of Pelletiers argument. It is made clear that Pelletier only questions the involvement of Iraq in Halajba in particular, note as mentioned before that more than a hundred other gas attacks by Iraqi's on Kurds also occured, and even Pelletier does not question these. This article states:

"Last year, Pelletiere published a book (*) that Wanniski seems to think argued that Iraq never gassed Iraqi citizens. But as one can plainly see by scrolling down to the portion of Wanniski's memo (*) that quotes Pelletiere at length, Pelletiere's claim is that in March 1988, both Iran and Iraq gassed the Kurdish city of Halabja, which they were fighting over. Pelletiere's view-which is not widely shared by others-is that the Iraqis used mustard gas, while the Iranians used a much deadlier cyanide-based gas, and that it was this cyanide gas that killed most or all of the thousands of Kurdish civilians who died at Halabja"

And

"Joost Hiltermann of Human Rights Watch is writing a book about Halabja and other incidents in which the Kurds were gassed. He says that he's seen no evidence that Iran used chemical warfare during the Iran-Iraq war and plenty of evidence that Iraq did. Much of the latter is available online. Here"

Additionally

"United Nations reports from 1986, 1987, and 1988 confirm (based in part on reports from Iraqi soldiers who had been taken prisoner) that Iraq used mustard gas and nerve agents in the Iran-Iraq war and that these killed a growing number of civilians. In 1993, Physicians for Human Rights found evidence (*) of nerve agents in soil samples in the Kurdish village of Birjinni and cited Kurdish eyewitnesses who said that one day in August 1988, they saw Iraqi warplanes drop bombs emitting "a plume of black, then yellowish smoke" and that shortly thereafter villagers "began to have trouble breathing, their eyes watered, their skin blistered, and many vomited-some of whom died. All of these symptoms are consistent with a poison gas attack." The March 24 New Yorker carries a lengthy account by Jeffrey Goldberg (*) of Iraq's systematic gassing of the Kurdish population, based on extensive eyewitness interviews that Goldberg recently conducted in Halabja and other Kurdish-controlled areas in Northern Iraq. None of those interviewed seem to doubt that it was Saddam Hussein's army that gassed them"

(*) - links provided on source page

Finally, for an additional commentary on the subject see - (http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0204/0355.html)

In summary, the MTV News Byte Claim that "Saddam Gassed his own people" is clearly still true. There is some (very little) question about wheather Halabja was only an attack by Saddam which intentionally targeting Kurdish civilians, with Pelletiers seeming to be one of the few people that still believe this in an apparent sea of overwhelming evidence, as suggested in the letters above. But given Saddam's systematic effort to wipe out Kurds in perhaps 180 other chemical attacks that were in no way involved with the Iran Iraq war, and not even quesitoned by Pelletier, the trumpeting of this particular article of Pelletiers as a anti-war trophy is clearly an egregiously incorrect interpretation of the facts.

Regards,

Michael Dickey

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