By Leo Casey
Summer 2003
... Following the Iranian Islamist Revolution, the seizing of hostages from the American embassy, and the Iraqi invasion of Iran, Ronald Reagan's administration entered into "an enemy of my enemy" alliance with the Baathist state: it became an American proxy in its war with Iran. When Iran temporarily gained the upper hand in the war, the United States provided Iraq with "detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes, and bomb assessment damage," a New York Times investigative report concluded. German, British, and American corporations sold Iraq military hardware, arms technology, advanced computers, and key ingredients for the manufacture of missiles and chemical and biological weapons, with the active approval of the U.S. government, according to PBS Frontline, Washington Post, and Newsweek reports. Among the items purchased by Iraq, these reports determined, were American-built helicopters that were used, U.S. government officials concluded, in poison gas attacks on the Kurds. The Reagan State Department also approved, before being overruled by the Pentagon, the sale to Iraq of 1.5 million atropine injectors, a drug used to counter the effects of chemical weapons.
The first reports of the use of chemical weapons by the Iraqis referred to battles against Iranian troops, and the U.S. government attempted to shift the blame onto the Iranians. As the evidence mounted, and especially after Halabja, the Reagan administration finally issued public condemnations of the use of poison gas. At first, the statements criticized both Iraq and Iran; eventually, they specifically cited and decried the Iraqi use of poison gas against the Kurds. But at no time, the New York Times reports, did the Reagan administration end the top-secret program through which more than sixty officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency provided the Iraqi government with intelligence information and battle plans that facilitated the use of chemical weapons. Instead, Reagan and then the first Bush administration officials fought back congressional efforts to place sanctions on Iraq for its use of poison gas at Halabja. The Pentagon "wasn't so horrified by Iraq's use of gas," one of the veterans of the DIA program told the Times. "It was just one more way of killing people -- whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn't make any difference" ...
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=487Democracy Now! <Monday, September 29th, 2003>
Halabja: How Bush Sr. Continued to Support Saddam After the 1988 Gassing of Thousands And Bush Jr. Used it As a Pretext For War 15 Years Later
... JOHN STAUBER: Well, Amy, let me first start by saying that even I have been absolutely stunned by the statements of Colin Powell and Condoleezza rice, especially the secretary of state who went to Halubjah recently and said the U.S. should have acted sooner there because of what occurred there, which is the gassing of thousands of men, women, and men. And here is the ultimate hypocrisy. I think this has become the primary justification now for the war. But the event occurred in 1988. The chemicals were supplied by the Reagan administration. And after the gassing of civilians in Halubjah, there was a bipartisan effort to try to pass the 1988 prevention of genocide act. That act was killed by Colin Powell, who was Ronald Reagan’s secretary of—or was Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor, and he led the effort to kill the prevention of genocide act introduced after Halubjah. I mean, chemical Ali, who we’re hearing so much about, was essentially our ally during that time. And if history were truthfully told, we would probably be referring to Colin Powell as chemical Colin. Now, what happened after Halubjah, of course, just a couple years later, Saddam Hussein apparently thought he was so well loved by what was then the bush administration succeeding the Reagan administration that, of course, he invaded Kuwait, took over those oil fields, and soon learned that the bush administration would not allow that. In order to galvanize U.S. support for a war against our former ally, Saddam Hussein, the bush administration working with a front group funded by the Kuwaiti royal family called citizens for a free Kuwait staged a stunt in October of 1990, a hearing before the congressional human rights caucus, at which they were investigating Iraqi atrocities. Well, there were plenty of Iraqi atrocities, such as the most stunning atrocity, the gassing at Halabjah. But rather than refer to events in which the U.S. Reagan administration was complicit, they concocted a phony atrocity, and that, of course, was the “Nayirah Testimony” where this tearful young girl said she saw Iraqi soldiers rip babies out of incubators and leave them to die in occupied Kuwait. That was probably the turning point. That testimony, which was repeated over and over on the news was probably the turning point in the U.S. Senate voting to support the first gulf war. Of course, it came out a year later, although I think most Americans still do not know this, that that testimony was completely false, that anonymous young girl was actually a member of the Kuwaiti royal family. Her family, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., was in the room. A Llyod Fitz-Pegado Vice President of the Hill & Knowlton, which received over $10 million from Kuwaitis, to set up the front group, coached that young girl in her false testimony. And it’s very interesting, as we wrote, I wrote “weapons of mass deception” to go back and look at how the first gulf war, there was almost no mention of Halabjah because, of course, there was no desire on the part of the bush administration to draw attention to a genocidal event in which they had been complicit. Instead, in order to demonize Saddam Hussein, the former bush ally, they repeated over and over the baby killing charge, the phony charge. Now flash ahead to the current situation and what we see is that the true story that this was a staged and phony event is not in the news.
What’s in the news today and has become sort of the primary argument for a wider war was a good thing is Halabjah. And the real crank up for publicizing Halabjah began in September of 2002, just as the current bush administration was doing its so-called product launch for the war in Iraq. Now, we’ve gone back and actually analyzed very carefully the number of reportings both in the Halabjah with the search program.
And I won’t spit out the statistics stinks, they’re in our book, but they ignored Halabjah in which the U.S. was complicit, provided the weapons of mass destruction, and then Colin Powell led the lobby campaign to kill the prevention of genocide act. More recently, I think they’ve got the American public duped and confused into thinking that Halabjah was some sort of recent event because they are now repeating the Halabjah story over and over, and it’s been echoed over and over in the news since September 2002. But bottom line here, if chemical Ali goes on trial, I think probably chemical Colin should be on trial with him ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4853.htmhttp://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/29/155243
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