Rewriting Iraq's History

[Makalakumu]

Just how much has the Right rewritten history regarding Iraq?

Saddams origins, the Iran/Iraq war, origin of Saddams weapons, and gas attacks.

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/02-18-98.html

The First Gulf War

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/02-19-98.html

Did Saddam Gas his own people?

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/11-18-98.html

Perhaps, what we hear from our leaders bears very little truth.

upnorthkyosa

 

[Makalakumu]

A few assorted tidbits from the first source. This stuff is really worth reading.

“Our ambassador to Iraq in these years, Edward Peck, tells me there is no question that as much as ordinary people in Iran came to hate the Shah, the ordinary people of Iraq came to love Saddam…”

“As the Ayatollah began to call for an uprising of Sh’ia fundamentalists all over the Middle East, including his old neighbors in Iraq, Saddam also spent lavishly on a military buildup. The United States, Israel, and the NATO powers were happy to sell him anything it wanted. When we hear the President remind us that Saddam invaded Iran, we should remember that he did so "out of fear, not out of greed," which is how one of his biographers puts it…”

“In that period, his biographers agree that Iraq used poison gas several times that we can be sure of. From my readings, I’ve gotten the impression that except in one instance, they were used as a last resort, when his forces were about to be overwhelmed by Iranian forces. In those cases where he used poison gas against his own people, the most egregious example was in 1988, when the city of Halabja was gas bombed in the Kurdish area. The UN estimates that 5,000 Iraqis were killed and 10,000 wounded, the bombing occurring after the city had surrendered to the Iranians. There were other Iraqi villages gassed in the Kurdish region, but my impression is that they were given warnings of several weeks to evacuate as Baghdad was relocating some significant portion of the Iraqi Kurds for reasons not clear to me. Even those historians clearly hostile to Saddam will point out that the western powers kept him supplied with the materials needed for chemical weapons right up to the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, including material cleared by the U.K.”

 

[Makalakumu]

This is a..."1990 Pentagon report, published just prior to the invasion of Kuwait. Its authors are Stephen C. Pelletiere, Douglas V. Johnson II, and Leif R. Rosenberger, of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The report is 93 pages, but I append here only the passages having to do with the aforementioned issue:

Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East

Excerpt, Chapter 5

U.S. SECURITY AND IRAQI POWER

Introduction. Throughout the war the United States practiced a fairly benign policy toward Iraq. Although initially disapproving of the invasion, Washington came slowly over to the side of Baghdad. Both wanted to restore the status quo ante to the Gulf and to reestablish the relative harmony that prevailed there before Khomeini began threatening the regional balance of power. Khomenini’s revolutionary appeal was anathema to both Baghdad and Washington; hence they wanted to get rid of him.

United by a common interest, Iraq and the United States restored diplomatic relations in 1984, and the United States began to actively assist Iraq in ending the fighting. It mounted Operation Staunch, an attempt to stem the flow of arms to Iran. It also increased its purchases of Iraqi oil while cutting back on Iranian oil purchases, and it urged its allies to do likewise. All this had the effect of repairing relations between the two countries, which had been at a very low ebb.

In September 1988, however -- a month after the war had ended -- the State Department abruptly, and in what many viewed as a sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemicals against its Kurdish population. The incident cannot be understood without some background of Iraq’s relations with the Kurds. It is beyond the scope of this study to go deeply into this matter; suffice it to say that throughout the war Iraq effectively faced two enemies -- Iran and the elements of its own Kurdish minority. Significant numbers of the Kurds had launched a revolt against Baghdad and in the process teamed up with Tehran. As soon as the war with Iran ended, Iraq announced its determination to crush the Kurdish insurrection. It sent Republican Guards to the Kurdish area, and in the course of this operation -- according to the U.S. State Department -- gas was used, with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred. Nonetheless, Secretary of State Schultz stood by U.S. accusations, and the U.S. Congress, acting on its own, sought to impose economic sanctions on Baghdad as a violator of the Kurds’ human rights.

Having looked at all of 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 organizations who examined the Kurds -- in Turkey where they had gone for asylum -- failed to discover any. Nor were there ever 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.

We would have expected, in a matter as serious as this, that the Congress would have exercised some care. However, passage of the sanctions measure through the Congress was unusually swift -- at least in the Senate where a unanimous vote was secured within 24 hours. Further, the proposed sanctions were quite draconian (and will be discussed in detail below). Fortunately for the future of Iraqi-U.S. ties, the sanctions measure failed to pass on a bureaucratic technicality (it was attached as a rider to a bill that died before adjournment).

It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, the Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraqi-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing a great 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 chemicals in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.

Thus, in our view, the Congress acted more on the basis of emotionalism than factual information, and without sufficient thought for the adverse diplomatic effects of its action. As a result of the outcome of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq is now the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf, an area in which we have vital interests. To maintain an uninterrupted flow of oil from the Gulf to the West, we need to develop good working relations with all of the Gulf states, and particularly with Iraq, the strongest.

 

[MisterMike]

“Our ambassador to Iraq in these years, Edward Peck, tells me there is no question that as much as ordinary people in Iran came to hate the Shah, the ordinary people of Iraq came to love Saddam…”

--- Having a flashback of the celebration in the streets of Baghdad as the statue came down ---

--- Wonders, ordinary to whom? ---

 

[Flatlander]

According to my Iraqi friends, life was good there before the war with Iran. It got progressively worse after that, culminating with the US sanctions.

 

[MisterMike]

What brings on Sanctions? I'll ask a question of Saddam more commonly asked of our current President: Was he fit to lead?

His actions brought on the sanctions.

 

[loki09789]

I think the point is whether the information that was used to gain popular support of action against Iraq was the "truth" or sensational falsehoods.

I don't think you will find any 'truth' in persuasive writing. You will find shiftin policies because of the need of the moment and reflection on past actions based on what that current 'need' is for the people who are explaining actions.

Saddam is a Bad man. That I will not argue. Was he, in the last action, an urgent threat to the US interests? I don't know enough to be able to say absolutely NO (because, there are intelligence pieces that are NEVER going to be made public because Diplomacy is like Poker and you never tip your hand). But, based on what I have gleaned from the Media I would say that he was not the immediate danger.

I still say it was a righteous operation because of the Treaty and Saddam's non compliance and outright refusal at times to comply with his signed agreement. For the typical "What about all the other 'evil leaders' out there?", the point is that we had a contractual treaty agreement and he was not honoring his part of the bargain. He needed to be held accountable. I just don't agree with the timing.

 

[Flatlander]

What brings on Sanctions? I'll ask a question of Saddam more commonly asked of our current President: Was he fit to lead?

His actions brought on the sanctions.

Yes, his actions brought on sanctions, from this site :

The UN Security Council imposed comprehensive economic sanctions against Iraq on August 6, 1990, just after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

This doesn't reveal anything about the way Saddam treated his people, however.

Saddam was a ruthless dictator. He controlled his people through fear. He executed insurgents, and those who would express their political views that were anti Saddam. However, the Iraqi citizens suffered on a much larger scale (famine, lack of medical supplies, degraded education system, etc.) as a result of the sanctions. Previous to that, the citizenry had been provided for, thought the tradeoff was their freedom of expression. The sanctions did nothing to repair that, by the way.

 

[PeachMonkey]

I still say it was a righteous operation because of the Treaty and Saddam's non compliance and outright refusal at times to comply with his signed agreement. For the typical "What about all the other 'evil leaders' out there?", the point is that we had a contractual treaty agreement and he was not honoring his part of the bargain. He needed to be held accountable. I just don't agree with the timing.

There was no "signed contractual treaty agreement".

Weapons inspections were set up by UN Security Council Resolution 687 of 3/4/1991, which determined the terms of the cease-fire and created UNSCOM. This was an externally imposed resolution.

The UN Security Council was acting within its powers to impose this resolution.

As for being held accountable, this has been discussed many times; UNMOVIC (the replacement agency for UNSCOM) was working inside Iraq to verify compliance at the time of the invasion.

 

[loki09789]

There was no "signed contractual treaty agreement".

Weapons inspections were set up by UN Security Council Resolution 687 of 3/4/1991, which determined the terms of the cease-fire and created UNSCOM. This was an externally imposed resolution.

The UN Security Council was acting within its powers to impose this resolution.

As for being held accountable, this has been discussed many times; UNMOVIC (the replacement agency for UNSCOM) was working inside Iraq to verify compliance at the time of the invasion.

And was there compliance?

 

[michaeledward]

--- Having a flashback of the celebration in the streets of Baghdad as the statue came down ---

Look close at that flashback ...

Many of those participating in the 'celebration' were from the 'Iraqi National Congress', an organization headed by Ahmed Chalabi; Iraqi exiles who have lived abroad for years. They were flown in special by the United States to participate in that 'celebration'. Not to forget that Ahmen Chalabi was on the United States Payroll for years, to the tune of $300,000.00 per month.

Of course, not only is he an indicted ebmezzeler, convited in absentia in Jordan, currently he is on the United States watch list as a potential spy for Iran.

Just months ago, he was Donald Rumsfeld's favorite choice to lead the newly liberated Iraq.

Some celebration.

 

[PeachMonkey]

And was there compliance?

I apologize ahead of time if I seem frustrated, because this has been discussed over and over. Yes, there was compliance, but there were also problems with Iraq's compliance.

Both the IAEA and UNMOVIC stated that Iraq had not cooperated fully with requests for information, and that some information about the extent and direction of research programs had been falsified.

The IAEA also stated that there was *no evidence of a nuclear weapons program*. UNMOVIC noted that they had found *no chemical or biological stockpiles*.

The IAEA and UNMOVIC *both* asked for more time to continue research and inspections.

The US justified its invasion on the "non-compliance" listed above, and on "other intelligence" provided at the UN Security Council by Colin Powell, all of which has been shown to be false and/or incorrect.

The heads of IAEA, UNMOVIC, and the UN General Assembly have *all* stated post-war that the US went to war in Iraq without justification and in violation of the UN Security Council and international law.

 

[Makalakumu]

I think a big bombshell the sources above drop is the intimation that what we have been told about the gassing events is in doubt.

Another bombshell is that the documents in this source clearly state that Saddam was sold his WMD from western powers including the US.

Another bombshell is the fact that the US and the west supported his nuclear program.

And then there is the Elder Bushes dealing with Saddam prior to the Gulf War. There is so much more to that story then what we were told by our media.

I'm not saying that these sources present the truth, but the sources cited within them are very credible contradictions.

upnorthkyosa