arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Saddam de vergasser der Koerden ??
by han Thursday October 24, 2002 at 04:59 PM
han@indymedia.be

"Indien Saddam in staat is zijn eigen bevolking te vergassen zal hij dat tegen anderen ook gebruiken." Dat is zowat de logica van de sancties die aan Irak worden opgeled en die ondertussen al aan zo wat 1,5 miljoen mensen het leven kostten. Maar wat blijkt volgens Amerikaanse bronnen: er is geen bewijs dat Irak ooit gas zou gebruikt hebben tegen zijn eigen bevolking.

Saddam de vergasser der Koerden??

"Indien Saddam in staat is zijn eigen bevolking te vergassen zal hij dat tegen anderen ook gebruiken."
Dat is zowat de logica achter de sancties die aan Irak worden opgelegd en die ondertussen al aan zo wat 1,5 miljoen mensen het leven kostten. Maar wat blijkt volgens Amerikaanse bronnen: er is geen bewijs dat Irak ooit gas zou gebruikt hebben tegen zijn eigen bevolking.

Halabdjah
Halabdjah is een dorpje in het grensgebied met Iran, de legende wil dat Irak daar in 1987 doelbewust gas zou hebben ingezet tegen de Koerdische bevolking.

April 1998, één van de oude adviseurs van Reagan ,Jude Wanniski, schrijft een verontwaardigde nota naar Jesse Helms (US Buitenlandse zaken).
Jude Wanniski ontdekt namelijk een rapport van : Stephen C. Pelletier, Douglas V.Johnson II an Leif R.Rosenbergher van het Strategic studies institute of the US war College.
"In Maart 1988 werden de Koerden van Halabdjah gebombardeerd met chemische wapens, dat kostte het leven aan heel wat Koerden. Foto's van de slachtoffers werden wijd verspreid door de internationale media. Irak werd veroordeeld voor de aanval, zelfs indien de Irakezen erop wezen dat ook Iran chemische wapens gebruikte in de regio, en dat het meer dan waarschijnlijk een Iraans bombardement was dat de Koerden doodde. Het is in onze ogen meer dan waarschijnlijk dat de aanval werd verricht door Iraanse troepen."
http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/02-08-98.html
http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/04-07-98.html

Kol Al-Arab & L'idiot International 13 maart 1991.
Dr Abdul Rahman Chassemlou, de secretaris van Demokratische Koerdische partij van Iran, vertelt dat hij geen weet heeft van het gebruik van chemische wapens tegen de Koerden door Irak. Zijn organisatie is nochthans actief in de regio en heeft wel weet van het gebruik van dergelijk wapens door Iran in 1982 en op 16 augutus 1986.

De New York Times van 28 april 1991 weet te melden dat : "Beide partijen chemische wapens hebben ingezet.... geen van beide partijen heeft doelbewust gifgas gebruikt tegen de burgerbevolking, het gebied lag in het midden van een oorlogszone."

In de Washinton Post van 4 mei1990 staat het verslag van een rapport van Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten : "We weten dat Irak geen cyanide gas gebruikt. We beschikken over een goede kennis van Iraakse chemische wapens en hun productie, en weten dat Irak niet over cyanide beschikt en het ook niet aanmaakt. We zijn er zeker van dat Iran cyanide gebruikt."

Verschillende rapporten van verschillende Amerikaanse diensten wijzen er ook op dat ze nooit het gebruik van chemische wapens tegen de eigen bevolking door Irak konden aantonen. Ze ondervroegen en onderzochten heel wat vluchtelingen in Turkije maar konden nooit sporen vinden van het gebruik van gifgas.

Het minste dat je kan zeggen is de het hele verhaal omstreden is, toch duikt het in de media steeds opnieuw op.


De auteur is geen aanhanger van het regime in Irak. Met dit artikel wil hij voornamelijk ingaan tegen propaganda en leugens die in de media gangbaar zijn over Irak.

Copyleft:
Copyright (c) 2002 han Soete (han@indymedia.be).
Permission is granted to copy, distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License

links
by guido Thursday October 24, 2002 at 05:31 PM

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/02-08-98.html
http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/04-07-98.html
links werken niet

links hieronder, eentje toch
by guido Thursday October 24, 2002 at 05:44 PM

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/04-07-98.html

The headline: "U.N. arms experts finish Iraqi palace inspections", CNN, 4-4-98.

The meat: "Iraqi presidential sites yield no weapons". Arabic News, 4-2-98.

Search TalkShop for "Iraq" and get into the thick of the discussion.
April 7, 1998
What Happened at Halabjah?

Memo To: Chairman Jesse Helms, Senate Foreign Relations
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Iraqi use of Poison Gas

I continue to make inquiry into the situation in Iraq, as it is likely to brew up into another crisis one of these days when the United Nations has no choice but to conclude that Iraq is not hiding any weapons of mass destruction -- or if they are, they are so well hidden that nobody is going to find them. As you know, I'm sure, the warhawks in the United States will continue to insist that the embargo remain in place no matter what, and there will be assertions from around the world that we have not been acting in good faith. As you also know, I believe there are serious questions regarding our behavior toward Iraq that go back further. You would agree, I think, that at the very least our State Department gave a "green light" to Saddam Hussein to go into Kuwait in August 1990. The more I read of the events of the period, the more I believe history will record that the Gulf War was unnecessary, perhaps even that Saddam Hussein was willing to retreat back to his borders, but our government decided we preferred the war to the status quo ante.

In my previous correspondence with you on this matter, I had been in a quandary about the state of our relations with Baghdad during that critical period. In the months immediately preceding the "green light" given by our Ambassador, April Glaspie, a number of your Senate colleagues including Bob Dole had traveled to Baghdad, met with Saddam, and found him to be a head of state worthy of support. Even Sen. Howard Metzenbaum [D-OH], a Jewish liberal and staunch supporter of Israel, gave him a seal of approval. What disturbs me even now, Jesse, is that these meetings occurred after the Senate Foreign Relations committee had accused Iraq of using poison gas against its own people, i.e., the Kurds. Like all other Americans, in recent years I had assumed that what I read in the papers was true about Iraq gassing its own people. Once the war drums again began beating last November, I decided to read up on the history, and found Iraq denied having used gas against its own people. Furthermore, I heard that a Pentagon investigation at the time had also turned up no hard evidence of Saddam gassing his own people.

This is serious stuff, because the United Nations tells us that 1.4 million Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the sanctions, which is three thousand times more than the number of Kurds who supposedly died of gassing at the hands of Saddam. Many of my old Cold Warrior friends practically DEMAND that we not lift the sanctions because if Saddam would gas his own people, he would gas anyone. Now I have come across the 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.