[A-List] US imperialism: Iraq & some complications

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

US abandons plan for strike on Kurdish rebels in Iraq
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
The Independent, 21 August 2002

The Bush administration has abandoned a plan to launch a military strike
against a small radical Kurdish group in northern Iraq with supposed
links to al-Qa'ida that was apparently experimenting with toxic agents
and poison gas.

The White House decided against the military option after judging the
risk presented by the group was not sufficient to risk the lives of
American soldiers or the international outcry of launching an operation
inside Iraq.

There were widespread reports that the operation was being planned
against Ansar al-Islam, a 300-strong Islamist group that operates in a
part of Iraq outside Saddam Hussein's control. Some members are believed
to have trained at al-Qa'ida camps in Afghanistan.

There is a tenuous link between the group and President Saddam, who is
said to pass it arms to harass other larger Kurdish nationalist groups
seeking a separate state in northern Iraq. US officials said there was
no evidence the Iraqi government was linked to the poison tests. But the
US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, indicated last night he believed
that Saddam was aware of what Ansar al-Islam has been doing.

"It's very hard to imagine that the government is not aware of what's
taking place in the country," he said.

The possibility of an operation being launched followed the discovery
that the group was testing primitive forms of ricin and poisonous
cyanide gas on animals. Initial reports described these tests as being
done in a laboratory but subsequent information suggests there was a
much more basic set-up. One report said at least one test was done on a
human.

Ricin is a lethal by-product of the castor bean plant. "It is toxic,
probably seven times more toxic than phosgene, which was a chemical
weapon used in the First World War," said Jonathan Tucker, director of a
chemical and biological weapons non-proliferation programme at the
Monterey Institute of International Studies. "There is no treatment and
no vaccine for ricin exposure."

Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that the head of the US Special
Forces Command, Air Force General Charles Holland, met Mr Rumsfeld, last
month to discuss a possible operation against Ansar al-Islam. The raid
was envisaged as a combined CIA and Pentagon operation, likely to
involve Delta Force or other such groups.

A spokesman for the White House National Security Council said: "We
don't confirm whether something was, is or might be a military target."

The revelations will cause discomfort in the White House because
President George Bush has promised every audience he addresses that his
administration will "hunt the killers down one by one" and prevent
America's enemies acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

* CNN and CBS both paid for a set of videotapes said to depict al-Qaida
poison gas experiments, it was revealed yesterday, but both insisted the
money did not go to Osama bin Laden's terrorist organisation. CNN said
at first it had not paid for the tapes.