NationStates Jolt Archive

Ths came up in a discussion (I know--when do we have those around here?) in another thread, and I haven't had the time to do a lot of research on it as of yet, so maybe we can pool our collective resources on it.

It's taken for granted that Hussein gassed the Kurds and perhaps the Shi'as in southern Iraq during the post-Gulf War I uprising, but did he? All the news stories I've read that deal with the gassing date back to 1988, pre-Gulf War, but right around the time that the Iran-Iraq war (where US-supplied chemical weapons were certainly used) was wrapping up or had just ended.

I'm not speaking with absolute certainty here that Hussein didn't gas his own people after the first Gulf War--I certainly have been under the impression he did, but now I'm not so sure. Anyone know for certain and have proof to back it up?

Yeah, Zeppistan wrote a really good post.. I'm afraid I might not be able to find it now as he wrote it before the move. However there is some serious question as to who exactly gassed the Kurds, it may very well of not been Saddam at all. There would appear to be plenty of evidence it was in fact Iran.

I'll ask Zep to give you his info when he gets home from work.

Yeah, Zeppistan wrote a really good post.. I'm afraid I might not be able to find it now as he wrote it before the move. However there is some serious question as to who exactly gassed the Kurds, it may very well of not been Saddam at all. There would appear to be plenty of evidence it was in fact Iran.

The kurds are surrounded by countries who don't like them, so it could have been anyone.

The kurds are surrounded by countries who don't like them, so it could have been anyone.

So true.

As for the Shiites, I mean they were rising up against the government. What would any government do in that case? I'm sure Bush wouldn't sit by and allow the masses to try and over run the White House. Don't forget the Shiites did it because Bush Sr. certainly implied he would help them, then left them high and dry. So... there are some serious questions as to rational about why the Shiites were smacked down and even more questions as to whether Saddam ever gassed the Kurds at all. Also the mass graves they expected to find in Iraq haven't shown up either. They thought they'd find all kinds. I believe last count they can claim 50,000 (you have to keep in mind those graves could be there from the Iraq/Iran conflict too).. So.. people claiming outrageous numbers simply don't have the evidence to back up those numbers, yet we hear them none the less.

Ths came up in a discussion (I know--when do we have those around here?) in another thread, and I haven't had the time to do a lot of research on it as of yet, so maybe we can pool our collective resources on it.

It's taken for granted that Hussein gassed the Kurds and perhaps the Shi'as in southern Iraq during the post-Gulf War I uprising, but did he? All the news stories I've read that deal with the gassing date back to 1988, pre-Gulf War, but right around the time that the Iran-Iraq war (where US-supplied chemical weapons were certainly used) was wrapping up or had just ended.

I'm not speaking with absolute certainty here that Hussein didn't gas his own people after the first Gulf War--I certainly have been under the impression he did, but now I'm not so sure. Anyone know for certain and have proof to back it up?

I thought I responded to this in that other thread. If I didn't, I apologize.

After a brief search, I have to conclude that you're correct. I thought he gassed the Kurds after the first Gulf War as well.

I believe last count they can claim 50,000 (you have to keep in mind those graves could be there from the Iraq/Iran conflict too).. So.. people claiming outrageous numbers simply don't have the evidence to back up those numbers, yet we hear them none the less.

How Many People Has Hussein Killed?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/weekinreview/26JOHN.html ^ | January 26, 2003 | JOHN F. BURNS

In the unlit blackness of an October night, it took a flashlight to pick them out: rust-colored butchers' hooks, 20 or more, each four or five feet long, aligned in rows along the ceiling of a large hangar-like building. In the grimmest fortress in Iraq's gulag, on the desert floor 20 miles west of Baghdad, this appeared to be the grimmest corner of all, the place of mass hangings that have been a documented part of life under Saddam Hussein.

At one end of the building at Abu Ghraib prison, a whipping wind gusted through open doors. At the far end, the flashlight picked out a windowed space that appeared to function as a control room. Baggy trousers of the kind worn by many Iraqi men were scattered at the edges of the concrete floor. Some were soiled, as if worn in the last, humiliating moments of a condemned man's life.

The United States is facing a new turning point in its plans to go to war to topple Mr. Hussein, with additional American troops heading for the Persian Gulf, while France and Germany lead the international opposition. But the pressure President Bush has applied already has created chances to peer into the darkest recesses of Iraqi life.

In the past two months, United Nations weapons inspections, mandated by American insistence that Mr. Hussein's pursuit of banned weapons be halted, have ranged widely across the country. But before this became the international community's only goal, Mr. Bush was also attacking Mr. Hussein as a murdering tyrant. It was this accusation that led the Iraqi leader to virtually empty his prisons on Oct. 20, giving Western reporters, admitted that day to Abu Ghraib, a first-hand glimpse of the slaughterhouse the country has become.

In the end, if an American-led invasion ousts Mr. Hussein, and especially if an attack is launched without convincing proof that Iraq is still harboring forbidden arms, history may judge that the stronger case was the one that needed no inspectors to confirm: that Saddam Hussein, in his 23 years in power, plunged this country into a bloodbath of medieval proportions, and exported some of that terror to his neighbors.

Reporters who were swept along with tens of thousands of near-hysterical Iraqis through Abu Ghraib's high steel gates were there because Mr. Hussein, stung by Mr. Bush's condemnation, had declared an amnesty for tens of thousands of prisoners, including many who had served long sentences for political crimes. Afterward, it emerged that little of long-term significance had changed that day. Within a month, Iraqis began to speak of wide-scale re-arrests, and officials were whispering that Abu Ghraib, which had held at least 20,000 prisoners, was filling up again.

Like other dictators who wrote bloody chapters in 20th-century history, Mr. Hussein was primed for violence by early childhood. Born into the murderous clan culture of a village that lived off piracy on the Tigris River, he was harshly beaten by a brutal stepfather. In 1959, at age 22, he made his start in politics as one of the gunmen who botched an attempt to assassinate Iraq's first military ruler, Abdel Karim Kassem.

Since then, Mr. Hussein's has been a tale of terror that scholars have compared to that of Stalin, whom the Iraqi leader is said to revere, even if his own brutalities have played out on a small scale. Stalin killed 20 million of his own people, historians have concluded. Even on a proportional basis, his crimes far surpass Mr. Hussein's, but figures of a million dead Iraqis, in war and through terror, may not be far from the mark, in a country of 22 million people.

Where the comparison seems closest is in the regime's mercilessly sadistic character. Iraq has its gulag of prisons, dungeons and torture chambers ? some of them acknowledged, like Abu Ghraib, and as many more disguised as hotels, sports centers and other innocent-sounding places. It has its overlapping secret-police agencies, and its culture of betrayal, with family members denouncing each other, and offices and factories becoming hives of perfidy.

"Enemies of the state" are eliminated, and their spouses, adult children and even cousins are often tortured and killed along with them.

Mr. Hussein even uses Stalinist maxims, including what an Iraqi defector identified as one of the dictator's favorites: "If there is a person, then there is a problem. If there is no person, then there is no problem."

There are rituals to make the end as terrible as possible, not only for the victims but for those who survive. After seizing power in July 1979, Mr. Hussein handed weapons to surviving members of the ruling elite, then joined them in personally executing 22 comrades who had dared to oppose his ascent.

The terror is self-compounding, with the state's power reinforced by stories that relatives of the victims pale to tell ? of fingernail-extracting, eye-gouging, genital-shocking and bucket-drowning. Secret police rape prisoners' wives and daughters to force confessions and denunciations. There are assassinations, in Iraq and abroad, and, ultimately, the gallows, the firing squads and the pistol shots to the head.

DOING the arithmetic is an imprecise venture. The largest number of deaths attributable to Mr. Hussein's regime resulted from the war between Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988, which was launched by Mr. Hussein. Iraq says its own toll was 500,000, and Iran's reckoning ranges upward of 300,000. Then there are the casualties in the wake of Iraq's 1990 occupation of Kuwait. Iraq's official toll from American bombing in that war is 100,000 ? surely a gross exaggeration ? but nobody contests that thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed in the American campaign to oust Mr. Hussein's forces from Kuwait. In addition, 1,000 Kuwaitis died during the fighting and occupation in their country.

Casualties from Iraq's gulag are harder to estimate. Accounts collected by Western human rights groups from Iraqi émigrés and defectors have suggested that the number of those who have "disappeared" into the hands of the secret police, never to be heard from again, could be 200,000. As long as Mr. Hussein remains in power, figures like these will be uncheckable, but the huge toll is palpable nonetheless.

Just as in Stalin's Russia, the machinery of death is mostly invisible, except for the effects it works on those brushed by it ? in the loss of relatives and friends, and in the universal terror that others have of falling into the abyss. If anybody wants to know what terror looks like, its face is visible every day on every street of Iraq.

"Minders," the men who watch visiting reporters day and night, are supposedly drawn from among the regime's harder men. But even they break down, hands shaking, eyes brimming, voices desperate, when reporters ask ordinary Iraqis edgy questions about Mr. Hussein.

"You have killed me, and killed my family," one minder said after a photographer for The New York Times made unauthorized photographs of an exhibition of statues of the Iraqi dictator during a November visit to Baghdad's College of Fine Arts. In recent years, the inexorable nature of Iraq's horrors have been demonstrated by new campaigns bearing the special hallmark of Mr. Hussein. In 1999, a complaint about prison overcrowding led to an instruction from the Iraqi leader for a "prison cleansing" drive. This resulted, according to human rights groups, in hundreds, and possibly thousands, of executions.

Using a satanic arithmetic, prison governors worked out how many prisoners would have to be hanged to bring the numbers down to stipulated levels, even taking into account the time remaining in the inmates' sentences. As 20 and 30 prisoners at a time were executed at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, warders trailed through cities like Baghdad, "selling" exemption from execution to shocked families, according to people in Iraq who said they had spoken to relatives of those involved. Bribes of money, furniture, cars and even property titles brought only temporary stays.

MORE recently, according to Iraqis who fled to Jordan and other neighboring countries, scores of women have been executed under a new twist in a "return to faith" campaign proclaimed by Mr. Hussein. Aimed at bolstering his support across the Islamic world, the campaign led early on to a ban on drinking alcohol in public. Then, some time in the last two years, it widened to include the public killing of accused prostitutes.

Often, the executions have been carried out by the Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary group headed by Mr. Hussein's oldest son, 38-year-old Uday. These men, masked and clad in black, make the women kneel in busy city squares, along crowded sidewalks, or in neighborhood plots, then behead them with swords. The families of some victims have claimed they were innocent of any crime save that of criticizing Mr. Hussein.

so lets recap Saddam's charges shall we?

Gassing his own people.... well thats really debatable, and not a sure thing.
Funding Al Quaida... wait.. there has been no proof revealed to the public, infact I think I heard a US big-wig actually said there was no proof.
Posessing WMD's.... wait.. those were never found.. and its been acknowledged that the intel pointing at the WMD's was faulty, so there could never have been any.
.....
I'm running out of charges here...
OH.

He invaded Iran. Well tried to. and got his ass whooped back to Iraq.
um...

ok.... I'm lost. why exactly did you americans take Saddam out?

OH I know why....

an often overlooked and easily forgotten issue...
He was C.I.A. trained.
Wait... am I wrong.. but wasnt Bin Laden also C.I.A. trained? I think I heard something about that somewhere....

wait.. isnt the C.I.A. the ones who were providing the intel to Bush for him to act on?

interesting....

Well, here's the thing. Saddam certainly did kill a large number of Shi'as in the post-Gulf War uprising, but according to what I read last night, he didn't use WMD. Now there's a possibility he didn't gas the Kurds, but there's also a good chance he did--just back in 1988, and with US-supplied weaponry.

The only reason I ask is because it keeps coming back and neither side is particularly clear about it. I'm just looking for accuracy here.

How Many People Has Hussein Killed?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/weekinreview/26JOHN.html ^ | January 26, 2003 | JOHN F. BURNS.

This is not evidence. This is speculative and conjecture. Evidence is when you can actually find some thing.. you know, kind of how they speculated WMD would be found in Iraq, yet that didn't turn out either. Yet the NYT and just about every news outlet in the USA was spouting it back in 2002 as absolute. Thus far only 50,000 dead bodies have been uncovered in mass graves. There is also no clear indicator of who they are and who killed them. Am I saying Saddam wasn't a brutal dictator? No, not at all, I'm just saying so far the numbers if not completely wrong have certainly been over estimated. As for defectors, most defectors have an agenda, don't forget it was the defectors that Chalabi lined up for Bush who gave them all this info (incorrect info) on the mass stock piles of WMD that turned out to also be false.

As for war, well one can not hold Saddam accountable for that. Or should Bush be put on trial for the 1000+ servicemen and women who have died in his war of choice?

No, you offer no evidence nor can you, because there is no evidence to back up any of these assertions.

This is not evidence. This is speculative and conjecture. Evidence is when you can actually find some thing.. you know, kind of how they speculated WMD would be found in Iraq, yet that didn't turn out either. Yet the NYT and just about every news outlet in the USA was spouting it back in 2002 as absolute. Thus far only 50,000 dead bodies have been uncovered in mass graves. There is also no clear indicator of who they are and who killed them. Am I saying Saddam wasn't a brutal dictator? No, not at all, I'm just saying so far the numbers if not completely wrong have certainly been over estimated. As for defectors, most defectors have an agenda, don't forget it was the defectors that Chalabi lined up for Bush who gave them all this info (incorrect info) on the mass stock piles of WMD that turned out to also be false.

As for war, well one can not hold Saddam accountable for that. Or should Bush be put on trial for the 1000+ servicemen and women who have died in his war of choice?

No, you offer no evidence nor can you, because there is no evidence to back up any of these assertions.

Oh, come'on, Steph! I've always thought that you were one of the more reasonable posters on here. It's been proven time and time again that Saddam killed great numbers of people, whether 50,000 or 50,000,000 the point is still valid. How many Saddam murders and tortures ( is that a word?? ) would he have had to commit for you to admit that he was a mass-murderer?

if you google saddam gas kurds you get a lot of stuff. When I did it the top of the list was
http://hnn.us/articles/1242.html

Which is a very balanced, well argued and well supported argument that he did gas the Kurds in 1988. A lot of the "no he didn't" stuff seems quite poorly supported. You can't prove anything really. A lot of people think the holocaust was a Zionist hoax. But I'm persuaded that Saddam gassed the Kurds. And I'm anti-war and always have been.

Oh, come'on, Steph! I've always thought that you were one of the more reasonable posters on here. It's been proven time and time again that Saddam killed great numbers of people, whether 50,000 or 50,000,000 the point is still valid. How many Saddam murders and tortures ( is that a word?? ) would he have had to commit for you to admit that he was a mass-murderer?

Yes, I agree, I never said Saddam didn't kill a lot of people. I'm sure he did. All I was saying is there is no evidence to back up he ever even attempted to commit "genocide" nor is there any evidence to back up the kind of numbers we hear people using. Like 300,000 dead in mass graves. That has never been proven, to this day! Did Saddam kill people who opposed him? Of course he did. So does China, N. Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, I could go on... There was nothing really that stuck out about Saddam over any of these other countries and their leaders other then a neo-conservative ideology that thankfully has now been proven wrong. PNAC is, dare I say out of business.

No, you offer no evidence nor can you, because there is no evidence to back up any of these assertions.

The professor at the link above offers a link to documentation recovered from Iraq after the gulf war. He says:


Some ten thousand of them have been posted to the World Wide Web at the Iraq Research and Documentation Program at the Center for Middle East Studies of Harvard University: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~irdp/.

The captured documents explicitly refer to Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Kurds, called "Anfal" (spoils) operations.


Which is evidence if you think that the guy isn't lying and that the Iraq Research and Documentation Program at the Center for Middle East Studies of Harvard University isn't lying.

Have you any evidence to support your claim that there isn't any evidence that Saddam gassed the Kurds?

so lets recap Saddam's charges shall we?

Gassing his own people.... well thats really debatable, and not a sure thing.
Funding Al Quaida... wait.. there has been no proof revealed to the public, infact I think I heard a US big-wig actually said there was no proof.
Posessing WMD's.... wait.. those were never found.. and its been acknowledged that the intel pointing at the WMD's was faulty, so there could never have been any.
.....
I'm running out of charges here...
OH.

He invaded Iran. Well tried to. and got his ass whooped back to Iraq.
um...

ok.... I'm lost. why exactly did you americans take Saddam out?

OH I know why....

an often overlooked and easily forgotten issue...
He was C.I.A. trained.
Wait... am I wrong.. but wasnt Bin Laden also C.I.A. trained? I think I heard something about that somewhere....

wait.. isnt the C.I.A. the ones who were providing the intel to Bush for him to act on?

interesting....
Yeah, you must be right. Saddam is actually a really nice guy. Let's buy him a pony. :rolleyes:

Have you any evidence to support your claim that there isn't any evidence that Saddam gassed the Kurds?

My husband (Zeppistan) is quite knowledgeable of the "Anfal" incident. I will have him address this when he gets home from work. He has done the hard research on it. There is more to that picture then meets the eye. However, he has done the research not me, so I shall leave this for him. Check back later on tonight.

My husband (Zeppistan) is quite knowledgeable of the "Anfal" incident. I will have him address this when he gets home from work. He has done the hard research on it. There is more to that picture then meets the eye. However, he has done the research not me, so I shall leave this for him. Check back later on tonight.

I'll be back...

Oh, come'on, Steph! I've always thought that you were one of the more reasonable posters on here. It's been proven time and time again that Saddam killed great numbers of people, whether 50,000 or 50,000,000 the point is still valid. How many Saddam murders and tortures ( is that a word?? ) would he have had to commit for you to admit that he was a mass-murderer?

Oh, come'on, Steph a reasonable poster? Hardly. Her bias against Bush is well known. How can she be objective when she disagrees with everything that Bush has done? She claims that mass graves have not been found, yet 263 were recently found in Iraq. Were they from the Iran/Iraq war? Well, they were if women and children were fighting in that conflict.

Oh, come'on, Steph a reasonable poster? Hardly. Her bias against Bush is well known. How can she be objective when she disagrees with everything that Bush has done? She claims that mass graves have not been found, yet 263 were recently found in Iraq. Were they from the Iran/Iraq war? Well, they were if women and children were fighting in that conflict.

Translation: I do not have an over all bias. I have judged Bush on his actions, not based on his political leanings. You're right, I don't like Bush and with damn good reason.

I don't know exactly how many graves have been uncovered, I just know they amount to thus far 50,000 people. It's also pretty odd to think women and children would not of been included in any death toll of a war. "Collateral Damage" any one? Or does only the USA kill women and children in war time? I kind of thought it was the case in all wars. Hey if you say it's only the USA, I guess I'll have to take your word for it.

Yes, I agree, I never said Saddam didn't kill a lot of people. I'm sure he did. All I was saying is there is no evidence to back up he ever even attempted to commit "genocide" nor is there any evidence to back up the kind of numbers we hear people using. Like 300,000 dead in mass graves. That has never been proven, to this day!


Interestingly enough the Iraqi death toll as a result of UN sanctions put in place following the invasion of Kuwait is given as anywhere between 350,000 and 1,200,000. UNICEF and the WHO themselves give a figure of between 500,000 to 1,200,000 deaths.

Hussein gassed the Kurds and perhaps the Shi'as

Well .... I told him and told him that the beans he was putting in the chili had been left out too long and that he'd do best to just leave them out ... but nooooooo ... he would have none of that!

"Beans belong in Chili, James" he tells me.

I reminded him that beans are not allowed in national chili cook-offs, but the point becomes moot because it's not my nation we're talking about.

He throws in the beans anyway and then calls up the Kurds. He tells them to bring coleslaw, which they happily oblige. Kurdish coleslaw is some of the finest in the world. Now, the Shi'as just kinda showed up when they smelled the homemade cornbread and we weren't about to turn them away.

I don't eat chili with beans in it, so I passed on that one and munched on cornbread and beer while watching Saddam eat 4 huge bowls of chili with extra beans!

The rest is history.

That was it. That's the only case being put forward of Saddam gassing his own people. And it's debatable because the Iranian army was nearby at the time, so it could be that the Iraqis wanted to gas the Iranian army and hit the village by mistake or that it was the Iranians who gassed the village, since they had chemical weapons too.

The Kurds and Shias were cruelly repressed after the first gulf war but mostly using helicopters that Schwarzkopf didn't see as a problem for the Iraqi Army to keep. Actually, he didn't expect this use.

OK, I don't have all of my links here at work, but here is a starter on some of the questions on this matter:

For a beginning point, we have the official CIA documentation entitled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs" of 2002 detailing the proven cases where CBW were used.

It is at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm

Skip down to the Chemical Warfare Program section and you will note that out of the 10 documented cases of CBW weapons, the only proven instances where non-Iranians were targetted occurred during the Iran/Iraq war, and there is not one single case targetting Kurds only. The three cases noting that Kurds were targetted states that the Target Population was "Iranians/Kurds".

It should be noted that rebel Kurdish forces worked as allies of Iran during this war, and so were targetted as insurgent forces at the time.


The most often noted instance is the attack at Halabja. This is presented often as some unprovoked attack on civillians. I am looking for a link, but the Pentagon Report issued by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. War College in 1990 states otherwise.
Common Dreams kept a copy of a letter one of the authors of that report wrote in January of last year. It is available at:http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-08.htm


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.



I can not find a link to the actual report, nor have I much time to look right now. Maybe somebody else might be able to find a link. The author in question is Stephen C. Pelletiere. I just don't have time today.


But, to further support this issue, The US Marines also noted after the First Gulf war in FMFRP 3-203 - Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War, (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/appb.pdf)
Blood agents were allegedly responsible for the most infamous use of chemicals in the war—the killing of Kurds at Halabjah. Since the Iraqis have no history of using these two agents-and the Iranians do-we conclude that the Iranians perpetrated this attack. It is also worth noting that lethal concentrations of cyanogen are difficult to obtain over an area target, thus the reports of 5,000 Kurds dead in Halabjah are suspect.



So, did Saddam deliberately target civillian populations with CBW as part of his campaign? Or did't he? The CIA and Defence Department never could prove it. Ex-patriot Iraqis claimed that it happened, but no mass graves of corpses killed by such techniques have ever been discovered, and I think that the Kurds would have been able to lead US forces to such things after the invasion had they been able to. And I think that we all have a healthy skepticism of some claims made by the Iraqi ex-pat community these days after everything else they claimed in the leadup to the war.


There is no doubt that he used them against Iranian Forces. There is no doubt that part of the Iran-Iraq war was fought in Kurdish territories. There is no doubt that some Kurdish groups fought on the side of Iran in that war. But did he ever deliberately order the targetting of civillian populations with WMD?


That has never been conclusively proven to the CIA or Defence Department's standards from any documentation that I have read. And they ARE the authorities we should consult on this matter are they not?

Oh, come'on, Steph a reasonable poster? Hardly. Her bias against Bush is well known. How can she be objective when she disagrees with everything that Bush has done? She claims that mass graves have not been found, yet 263 were recently found in Iraq. Were they from the Iran/Iraq war? Well, they were if women and children were fighting in that conflict.

Biff, your bias against reasonable debate makes it difficult to give creedence to anything you say.

Zeppistan, these are good sources, but they don't deal with the Iraqi documentation of Anfal. Can it be that the CIA just hasn't read this stuff? For an intelligence agency, they aren't always tremendously intelligent.

Reminds me of an old joke circulating round the time of the first gulf war:
How is Saddam like little Miss Muffet?

They both have curds in their whey.

Translation: I do not have an over all bias. I have judged Bush on his actions, not based on his political leanings. You're right, I don't like Bush and with damn good reason.

I don't know exactly how many graves have been uncovered, I just know they amount to thus far 50,000 people. It's also pretty odd to think women and children would not of been included in any death toll of a war. "Collateral Damage" any one? Or does only the USA kill women and children in war time? I kind of thought it was the case in all wars. Hey if you say it's only the USA, I guess I'll have to take your word for it.

Steph! Please don't make me take back those nice things I said about you! :(

This is a really interesting thread! My concern has never been that Saddam was either good or bad (we all know he was/is a sonofabitch), but that evidence that is either patently untrue or simply trumped up was used as an excuse to invade a nation, costing over 1000 Americans their lives in the process.

For now, I'm (mostly) content to lurk and learn, but if I may bring up a tangent, I would like to -

Gulf War I - I'm hearing and reading plenty of reports and information regarding Iraq's legitimate issues with Kuwait, mainly Kuwaiti drilling and processing of oil on Iraqi soil. Apparently the Kuwaitis had also occupied several islands, causing "deep water issues", whatever that is, with Iraq. Furthermore, I've also seen several reports and heard from people I consider credible, who back up the notion that Iraq spoke with our then-ambassador, seeking tacit American approval for military operations against Kuwait, and received it! Then all of a sudden all hell broke loose, there was a massive coalition, and they stomped a mudhole in Iraq.

Zeppistan certainly seems like an individual with a great collection of information, and I'm curious if he can shed some light on this. If you feel this is a thread hijack, or too far off-topic, then just please disregard.

Zeppistan, these are good sources, but they don't deal with the Iraqi documentation of Anfal. Can it be that the CIA just hasn't read this stuff? For an intelligence agency, they aren't always tremendously intelligent.

I just went and looked at that Harvard site. It seems like some interesting extrapolations are made. e.g, there is a page marked "admission of Chemical Use" that contains the following:

This document is very important because it vitiates any claim by the government of Saddam Husayn that it did not use chemical weapons against its Kurdish population. The date, provenance and text of the document lend undeniable proof to the regime's genocide campaign, known as Anfal, against the Kurds. The Iraq regime's use of chemical weapons as part of the Anfal campaign was so widespread, the Iranians had to supply the Kurds with anti-chemical protectives.

-------------------------------------------------------
Urgent and Confidential Message

From: Security of Shaqlawa, Branch 3
Number 2034
10 May1987

To: All

We have been informed of the following:

1- The Iranian enemy has supplied the saboteurs' families in the villages and rural areas along the border with pharmaceutical drugs, especially anti-chemical medicaments; and they [the Iranian enemy] are training them to use syringes for this purpose and to wear protective head masks.
2- There exist approximately 100 saboteurs from various gangs of saboteurs in the Werta region, al-Sadiq district. They are along the Khanqawa route in order to stop the force accompanying the Village Deportation Committees, albeit most of the families in this region have left to Iran.

Please verify information and notify us within 24 hours.

[Signature]

Security Major
Director of Shaqlawa Security



The extrapolation that this proves the use of CBW in a genocidal campaign against civilians seems quite a stretch. He fails to point out that this was '87 at the time when - as mentioned - certain Kurdish groups were working in concert with Iran during the war. Armed allies in battle.

First off: This document does not, as claimed, admit to WMD use, but rather gives an intel report that Iran is giving Kurds safeguards against WMD. This could equally be taken to be a warning that Iran might be about to use THEIR chemical weapons and were providing their Kurdish allies with a safety measure in advance which was being taken to be a tip-off.

Because - as I have pointed out - BOTH sides of that war used CBW.

If that is an accurate translation, it seems that this person is reading something into the contents that they choose to read rather than what it actually says.

Because frankly I don't see where my explanation isn't an equally possible one.


And, as a final note, let us be very clear that this note relates explicitely to details on armed insurgents allied with a foreign force - not to general civillians, nor does it state how they are to be dealt with.

By comparison - what does the US do to houses they think might have insurgents in? Strafe it with AC-130 gunships using DU rounds? Drop a 500lb bomb or two on it?

Putting down insurgents hard seems to be something accepted by the Pentagon, so it would seem hipocritical to complain about Sadam doing the same thing.

If this were truly a genocidal campaign, then whether it was an issue of sabateurs, allies of Iran, or whatever would have been irrelevant. The note would have said: 'Hey - we found Kurds! I assume we should kill 'em as normal?"

Genocide is a specific term. Targetting sabateurs hardly qualifies.


Oh yes, and note that this site on the Harvard server is done by a Mr. FALEH A. JABAR (Ph.D. Sociology, Birkbeck College, University of London).

Is he on faculty? A student? Kurdish? A friend of Chalabi? What?

The fact that it is hosted on Harvard's server gives no special credence to the analysis without a background check that I don't have the time to do right now....

Dec. 31, 1983 is when he gassed Iranians, Just 12 days after the now infamous Rumsfeld visit (the picture/film with the handshake). Rumsfeld returned 4 months later http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13558-2003Dec18?language=printer
It is correct that the assault on the Kurds happened in 1988
"In a six-month campaign in 1988, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein systematically gassed and machine-gunned Kurds in northern Iraq, killing 100,000 Kurds and bulldozing some 1,000 villages. The first Bush administration viewed Iraq as a bulwark against Iran, and reasoned that the way Saddam acted inside his own borders was his own business. In 1988, while Saddam was carrying out the gas attacks, the U.S. provided Baghdad some $500 million in credits to buy American farm products. The year after the genocidal campaign, the U.S. doubled its contribution to Saddam's coffers, offering $1 billion in credits.

"Human rights and chemical weapons use aside," one shockingly misguided secret State Department assessment said, "in many respects our political and economic interests run parallel with those of Iraq." Chemical weapons use aside?"

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2002/power_icc_wsj_071002.htm

There is a Washington Post article from January 1, 1984 explaining the U.S. position that Iraq should not lose the Iraq/Iran war. It should also be noted that during the 80's is when the Iran Contra affair took place. Where Oliver North was found guilty of treason for using drug money to purchase weapons for Iran. George H. W. Bush gave him a pardon.

accually they have found WMD but the press does not want you to know that they have ran into several ied that wear made out of atry round that had nerve agent in them. and there are people who admit that soild iraq the wepons and stuff to build them i think the real question is still where are.....who has them where did they go but then that is to scary to think about so it much nicer to just pretend iraq did not have any WMD

And since your spelling and grammar prove you to be an obviously credible journalistic source, I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say, "Thanks for telling us." OK, guys, case closed! :lol:

accually they have found WMD but the press does not want you to know that they have ran into several ied that wear made out of atry round that had nerve agent in them.

Are you refering to the widely publicised incident covered here where mortar shells were discovered by the Danes dating back to the Iran-Iraq war, which were then shown _not_ to contain mustard gas, despite early reports?


Initial report:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/11/1073769454329.html

"Danish army says mortar shells from Iraq had no chemical agents"
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/11/1073769454329.html

http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html

http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html

nobody doubts that Halabja got nailed in the battle between Iranian and Iraqi troops fought there that day. And yes, it was a grusome thing. The issue is that BOTH sides had CBW. Both used them. And Kurds within that town were also involved in the fighting.

What has never been proven is who exactly fired the CBW shells into the town that day. But the Pentagon report at the time felt that it was the Iranians based on the evidence of what poison seemed to be used.

So the pictures prove the horror of the event, but not the perpetrator.

I believe last count they can claim 50,000.
I heard something about 5000 who died as a result of the gas attack.

Well, they were if women and children were fighting in that conflict.
Actually that did happen. Children often were send in as mine detectors. By both sides. And when they were running low on men, women had to fill the gap. Saddam had a fair number of women under arms when the Americans came to liberate the oil fields.

Actually that did happen. Children often were send in as mine detectors. By both sides. And when they were running low on men, women had to fill the gap. Saddam had a fair number of women under arms when the Americans came to liberate the oil fields.
I have pictures of some of these people in a book on the war, they had been blown up and poisoned. There faces were reddish with white spots around their mouths, not a pretty picture in any case.

Actually, everyone has gotten off track here. What I was looking for was some evidence that Hussein used poison gas on his own people after Gulf War 1. 1988 is pre-Gulf War 1.

Over and over again during the buildup to the most recent "adventure" in Iraq, we were told by government officials, especially Bush, that "we know Hussein has WMD because he used them on his own people." What we weren't told--by anyone but Howard Dean to my recollection--was that apparently those WMD were not used after 1988, unless someone can prove otherwise.

Can anyone prove otherwise? Please?

Saddam used WMD to consolidate power amoung the Kurds and to just basically piss on them, along with the Shia in the south and the Delta Marsh Arabs. He had no reason to gas these people after he had consolidated his hold on them. He threatened WMD in the Gulf War and WMD was actually found during the war; strikes on facilities containing WMD are explained as the main cause for Gulf War syndrome which shares many similiarites with exposure to Sarin gas. After the Gulf War, he was told to disarm and dispose of WMD, leading to the 12 years of nothing happening, inspections, random bombings by Clinton, and so forth.

If you're questioning whether or not the original attacks actually ever happened, the Iraqi people seem to think they did. Frankly thats good enough for me.

Saddam used WMD to consolidate power amoung the Kurds and to just basically piss on them, along with the Shia in the south and the Delta Marsh Arabs. He had no reason to gas these people after he had consolidated his hold on them. He threatened WMD in the Gulf War and WMD was actually found during the war; strikes on facilities containing WMD are explained as the main cause for Gulf War syndrome which shares many similiarites with exposure to Sarin gas. After the Gulf War, he was told to disarm and dispose of WMD, leading to the 12 years of nothing happening, inspections, random bombings by Clinton, and so forth.

If you're questioning whether or not the original attacks actually ever happened, the Iraqi people seem to think they did. Frankly thats good enough for me.No--what I'm asking for is some documentation that Hussein used poison gas on his own people after the first gulf War. If you can't provide that, then I appreciate the time.

There is no question that Hussein killed some of his own people in the time after the first Gulf War. I'm sure they and their relatives don't really care whether they died from poison gas or from conventional weapons. I'm not trying to make some sort of greater point here--I'm just trying to see if there's something that my own searches have missed.

No he didn't use WMD after the Gulf War, he wasn't allowed the have them after the Gulf War! He had weapons inspectors and all sorts of people breathing down his throat; if he popped up with WMD it would be tantamount to slitting his own throat.