[Marxism] Halabja

["James Daly" <james.irldaly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 04:11:45 -0700 From: irsp <irsp@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defence

IPS-Inter Press Service
 Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defence
 Sanjay Suri

Thousands were reported killed in the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in
Halabja in the north of Iraq 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 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 writes 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 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.

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