Unbelievable - Powell Says Gas Attack On Kurds Justified War

[cthrumatrix]

Powell Says Gas Attack On Kurds Justified War
Secretary Visits Town Where Thousands Died
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 16, 2003; Page A14


HALABJA, Iraq, Sept. 15 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell asserted today that a 1988 poison gas attack that killed an estimated 5,000 Kurds in this farming town nestled in Iraq's barren northern mountains was ample evidence that former president Saddam Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction and justified the U.S. decision to go to war.



In an emotional defense of the invasion of Iraq, Powell visited a mass grave site, toured a new museum commemorating the attacks and listened as Kurdish political leaders proclaimed that the Halabja massacre provided sufficient legitimacy to go to war.

snip

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11974-2003Sep15.html

I guess they'll take about any reason now...even if it happened 15 years ago.

[unblock]

1. and even if we supplied the with the chemical weapons...

and probably the intel as well....

[IndianaGreen]

2. Powell is as much a pathological liar as Cheney

This weekend's performance by Bush's dynamic duo was a masterpiece of mendacity and propaganda, a neocon "triumph of the Will," that Josef Goebbels would have been proud of.

[Kamika]

3. how can powell use rhethorics like that??

I mean Powell is Intelligent, if Bush would say that i wouldnt be surprised but Powell??

Are they getting so desperate so they have to lose all their selfrespect in order to justify the war now?

Powell KNOWS the hypocrasy in that statement, but he also knows the freeper sheep will buy it.. so i guess he just throws away any selfrespect he had in order to justify the war now.

It is damn unbelievable up to now i actually still HAD respect for him

[bitchkitty]

32. You said -

Are they getting so desperate so they have to lose all their selfrespect in order to justify the war now?

What they have is not self-respect, but a kind of attitude that is staggering in its arrogance.

[DS1]

4. will someone just build these fuckers a wheel

ala Wheel of Fortune?

pathetic.

[screembloodymurder]

8. Revisionist history.

Perhaps Mr. Powell should read a little history:
http://middleeastreference.org.uk/llb020916a.html
If you don't want to read all of this, here's the last paragraph.

Most crucially, the US and UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's known chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council. No resolution was passed during the war that specifically criticised Iraq's use of chemical weapons, despite the wishes of the majority.

From the beginning:

"Once again, the human rights record of a country is used selectively to legitimise military actions," they stated. "The US and other western governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and ignored Amnesty's campaign on behalf of the thousands of unarmed Kurdish civilians killed in the 1988 attacks on Halabja."

Western governments did more than turn a blind eye, though, to Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the 1980s. The US in particular supplied the material, logistical information, political backing and finance to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Iraq's assault on Iran, then the West's enemy-in-chief, involved the use of mustard agents, and the nerve gases sarin and tabun, from 1981/82 to 1988. Thousands of Iranian conscripts were choked to death in the first years of the war, and Iranian civilians were targeted with chemical agents as part of a campaign of terror. This was the context in which the Iraqi regime learnt not to worry about the prospect of international condemnation, however murderous its acts.

The US was well aware of the use of chemical weapons. The Secretary of State later acknowledged he had been aware of reports from 1983, and an expert team from the UN confirmed Iraqi chemical attacks in March 1984. Nevertheless, the US administration provided "crop-spraying" helicopters to Iraq, which were subsequently used in chemical attacks on the Kurds in 1988. It gave Iraq access to intelligence information that allowed Iraq to "calibrate" its mustard attacks on Iranian troops in 1984. It seconded its air force officers to work with their Iraqi counterparts from 1986. It approved technological exports to Iraq's missile procurement agency to extend the missiles' range in 1988, and blocked bills condemning Iraq in the House of Representatives (1985) and Senate (1988).

Most crucially, the US and UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's known chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council. No resolution was passed during the war that specifically criticised Iraq's use of chemical weapons, despite the wishes of the majority.

[Brucey]

5. I have no patience for Powell,

supposedly this guy is reasonable and a centrist... but why would any reasonable person agree to work for the chimp, and protect the chimp's views, and promote such rubbish. Anyway, didn't Abraham Lincoln kill thousands of his own people and wasn't he a Republican and doesn't that justify killing people who belong to the Republican party?

[Creideiki]

17. I think he fears his replacement

So he sells his soul knowing whoever came on after him would be ten times worse.

[Athletic Grrl]

24. Agreed.

I'd rather have Powell in that post than...oh...Wolfowitz....

The short suit of neo-cons is their ability to compromise. While this last bit from Powell is a huge suck up to the administration, I think he did a great job sticking up for his own principles (which aren't so bad) before this. I honestly believe we need to keep Powell in this spot until we boot the Chimp out.

[JanMichael]

29. No! No more Powell apologists!

Just one more excuse on a mountain of excuses!

Stop, please, I beg of you...

[Cheswick2.0]

6. sad thing is that so many americans will fall for it

Now something that happened 15 years ago is a reason to go to war? Have we just been stewing about those kurds for years and couldn't hold ourselves back?
Wouldn't it be devine retribution for this nutty argument if it truely was the Iranians who gassed the Kurds?

[Jacobin]

7. when are we going to invade ourselves for selling them the WMD?

[baldguy]

9. "I must say, you really did a good job on those Kurds, Saddam."

"Is there anything else we can do for you?"

"Well, Don - I could use some more of that gas. Gotta hit Iran, ya know. Oh, and do you have any of that anthrax that I could borrow?"

[Lexingtonian]

10. oh yes, the beloved Kurds!

I'm so glad that Colin Powell has reminded us of our long-suffering allies, the Kurds. Their long struggle against evil is so admirable, especially because we only sold them out a couple of times in the past two or three decades. And now that they have attained they highest true inner virtue- after such sulking at not getting paid handsomely for their small part in the recent warfare- they are also suddenly, by sheer coincidence, sitting on a bunch of nice oil fields. God really works in strange and convenient ways if we just help Him out and ignore some minor details!

Y'know, the running revisionism of the Bush crew was pretty funny for quite a while. But somehow it's getting boring now- and there's a constant to it: it always reeks of crap.

[Cha]

11. Asshole Liar! Killing thousands of Iraqis and getting our Soldiers

killed and wounded for Life is Not justified by what did or did Not happen to the Kurds by sadam.

Freakin' warmongering idiot...waterboy for murdering, lyin', thiefs!

[Q]

12. What Powell is trying to say...

...is that they can use any and all reasons for attacking any country at any time. When you think about it...Powell sounds like Saddam rationalizing his own attacks. In other words...the Bushies are using the killing of thousands of Kurds to kill thousands of Iraqi civilians.

- I wonder if Powell mentioned that Saddam was Reagan and Poppy's friend at the time and sold him the chemicals to use on the Kurds?

[loudnclear]

13. It certainly didn't justify an attack while it was happening!!

This cabal was in power (Regan/Bush) when the Kurds were being killed and they chose to look the other way as they gave Saddam the WMDs that he used against these people and against Iran. We are the lowest of the low.

[maha]

14. Bring Out Your Dead

"The truth is, 15 years ago the dead of Halabja were an inconvenience. You and others in the Reagan-Bush White House made sure those deaths didn't get in the way of your foreign policy agenda. But when the agenda became an invasion of Iraq, you shamelessly dug up the Halabja corpses and put them on display for your own purposes. Suddenly, you really, really cared about them."

http://www.mahablog.com/2003.09.14_arch.html#1063648605960

[Zephyrbird]

15. sniff sniff, sniff sniff.....do I smell

a hint of desperation here?

Nobody--certainly not our government back then (which contained basically the same a-holes as it does today)--gave a rip roaring fart for those kurds.

All of a sudden we build a case for war on their bones?

Is there no low to which Bush & Co. will stoop?!?

Never mind. Stupid question.

BUT, more and more folks I talk to who consider themselves "Republican" or "conservative" are REALLY getting disgusted. They can't bring themselves to think of voting for a Democrat, so they're telling me they're just not going to vote.

Well, well. I wouldn't mind if 20,000,000 conservative and repubs stayed home next year.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. Every Time I See Powell

I am reminded of the Biblical verse "For what will it profit a man who gains the whole world and forfeits his soul."

I don't believe Powell believes these right wing canards for a minute....

[Gman]

18. But, but, but but....

an old DWI by the "president" is irrelevant? Old naked pictures and gang bangs by Ahnold are irrelevant?

Mr. Powell, why did you lie about WMD's?

[CWebster]

19. Someone is still paying attention to Powell?

Who is still bowing and scraping for the mastah? The man(boy) has no pride.

[BelgianMadCow]

20. It must be hard for Powell,

trying to keep your gravitas while lying your ass off. And I bet he doesn't sleep well.

[CWebster]

23. bet he does

They exploit folk's illusions that Powell is more credible than they are, but he is actually worse - since he is willing to cater and pander.

He needs to be knocked off his pedestal and taken down considerable notches in the common perception that he is a decent fellow.

[ikojo]

27. I suspect Colin Powell sleeps very well

He is very well compensated for being Bush's errand boy. His son is doing especially well financially.

It's all about the Benjamins people

[fsbooks]

21. Just to remember, In 1992, Colin Powell said:

"The Gulf War was a limited-objective war, If it had not been, we would be ruling Baghdad today at unpardonable expense in terms of money, lives lost and ruined regional relationships."

This was in a 1992 article in Foreign Affairs, as quoted in:
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=2956

(An aside, I found this article on the gnutella network. Yes, the judges were right, the p2p network condemned by RIAA are used for much more than sharing music).

[GregW]

22. I wonder what our NUCLEAR attack on the Japanese has justified

... in the eyes of terrorists worldwide? We have proved we are incapable of containing our use of the most powerful WMD in human history, I guess this makes us open game for anyone looking to take a shot at us.

[Iverson]

26. or napalming SE Asia

I guess that invites invasion too.

[joycep]

25. That was the first thing I saw this morning when I picked up my paper

I could not believe my eyes. I once thought Powell was a decent man. He is as bad as the rest. Our paper is as bad as any right-wing rag today.

[Solly Mack]

28. So it's the Kurds again? Same "excuse" Poppy used

to rally people...

so an event that happened almost 20 years ago justifies war today.....an event the US played a part in by selling Iraq the gas in the first place...yeah, ok...and the American people are just how stupid, again?

[Aries]

30. Or was it really Iran?

From:
Halabja poison gas attack

...Some debate continues, however, over the question of whether Iraq was really the responsible party. In part, this controversy stems from the fact that the Halabja incident and other uses of chemical weapons by Iraq occurred while Iraq was receiving military and economic support from the United States. "By any measure, the American record on Halabja is shameful," says Joost R. Hiltermann of Human Rights Watch, which has extensively investigated the Halabja incident. In fact, the U.S. State Department even "instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame. The result of this stunning act of sophistry was that the international community failed to muster the will to condemn Iraq strongly for an act as heinous as the terrorist strike on the World Trade Center." <2>

Some people affiliated with the U.S. government at the time of the Halabja attack continue to insist that Iran, rather than Iraq, committed the atrocity. "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," wrote Stephen C. Pelletiere in a January 2003 opinion piece for the New York Times. "I am in a position to know," he stated, "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." <3>....

[ikojo]

31. I seem to recall that when the Senate tried

to issue a condemnation of the bombing of the Kurds Reagan/BUSH I stepped in and reminded them of what a close ally Saddam Hussein was.

http://www.casi.org.uk/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.html

1984
The SD announced on 6 March that, based on "available evidence," it "concluded" that Iraq used "lethal chemical weapons" (specifically mustard gas) in fresh fighting with Iran.<13> On 20 March, U.S. intelligence officials said that they had "what they believe to be incontrovertible evidence that Iraq has used nerve gas in its war with Iran and has almost finished extensive sites for mass-producing the lethal chemical warfare agent".<14>
European-based doctors examined Iranian troops in March 1984 and confirmed exposure to mustard gas.<15> The UN sent expert missions to the battle region in March 1984, February/March 1986, April/May 1987, March/April 1988, July 1988 (twice), and mid-August 1988. These missions detailed and documented Iraq’s CW use.<16>
According to the Washington Post, the CIA began in 1984 secretly to give Iraq intelligence that Iraq uses to "calibrate" its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. In August, the CIA establishes a direct Washington-Baghdad intelligence link, and for 18 months, starting in early 1985, the CIA provided Iraq with "data from sensitive U.S. satellite reconnaissance photography...to assist Iraqi bombing raids." The Post’s source said that this data was essential to Iraq’s war effort.<17>
The United States re-established full diplomatic ties with Iraq on 26 November,<18> just over a year after Iraq’s first well-publicized CW use and only 8 months after the UN and U.S. reported that Iraq used CWs on Iranian troops.
1985
In 1985 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to put Iraq back on the State terrorism sponsorship list.<19> After the bill’s passage, Shultz wrote to the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Howard Berman, cited the U.S.’ "diplomatic dialogue on this and other sensitive issues, " claimed that "Iraq has effectively distanced itself from international terrorism," and stated that if the U.S. found that Iraq supports groups practicing terrorism "we would promptly return Iraq to the list."<20> Rep. Berman dropped the bill and explicitly cited Shultz’s assurances.<21>
Iraq’s Saad 16 General Establishment’s director wrote a letter to the Commerce Department (CD) detailing the activities in Saad’s 70 laboratories. These activities had the trademarks of ballistic missile development.<22>

[pippin]

33. Hasn't Powell heard?

Sadam didn't do it?


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=344005



http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/04/1602606.php

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0218/trilling.php

http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00024.html

http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/GaseousLies.htm

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/helms.html

[Snellius]

34. So why didn't Bush I intervene when they had a chance?

Bush I is partially to blame for not coming to the aid of the Kurds, as was promised, after the Gulf War. They knew about the massacres and chose to do nothing for fear of "diplomatic complications."