Should be LBN, but I'm PISSED! Re: Powell & gassed Kurds

[zbdent]

I'm sorry, this really should be in the Late Breaking News (if it wasn't already posted).

But I feel the need to scream.

Check out the first paragraph of this from ABC News:

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20030915_85.html

"Secretary of State Colin Powell said at the mass grave of Iraqi Kurds killed in a 1988 gas attack that the killings showed the world should have acted sooner against President Saddam Hussein."

Now, anybody who bothers to read my posts would notice that one of my favorite rants is that Democrats, Liberals, and Amnesty International were SCREAMING about the gassing of the Kurds by Saddam Hussein between 1988 and the invasion of Kuwait.

I also point out that George Herbert Walker Bush and the Republicans pretty much had the attitude "Who cares. They're our 'partners'". I often include the reference to Arlen Specter giving a somewhat glowing report of being in Saddam's presence.

Now, one of the key players who was actually involved in Gulf I has the nerve to say "The world should have done something sooner."???? Why didn't he go to his boss in 1988 after hearing about this??????

You would think, having access to this information WHEN IT HAPPENED would have made Powell very upset!

I always get a kick out of the freeper types who bash us liberal-types by using the analogy "Well, if our neighbor was raping and killing his wife down the street and you called the police and the police were indifferent . . .". Yeah, if you call the police 15 years later and say "Oh, by the way, that guy who lives down the street? Yeah, right before his wife 'left him', I heard he was raping her, and then I saw him digging in his garden right after his wife 'went to visit her mother and never came back'."

FOLKS, GEORGE H.W. BUSH WAS THE F--KING POLICE IN THAT LITTLE STORY IN 1989/1990!!!

[gratuitous]

1. Gee, 1988, who was president then? Hmmm, think think

Of course, as zbdent has so ably pointed out, Saddam was just too good a customer back then to limit his nefarious activities. And, considering his practices then, you'd think an honorable businessman would refuse to have anything to do with him. You'd probably be right, which explains why Dick Cheney's Halliburton and its subsidiaries were ringing up $23 million in sales and service to the Iraqi dictator as late as 1998. No sense letting anything as inconvenient as ethics stand in the way of making a buck. At least, not if you're a Republican.

[Trajan]

2. We TRIED to do something sooner ....

But the american electorate was again HOODWINKED by the GOP into voting for Reagan/Bush then Bush/Quayle ....

I mean: Cmon: ... WHO the FUCK created the WMD loving monsters Saddam Hussein AND Osama Bin Laden ? ....

These are the children of that illicit affair ....

The GOP are simply too irresponsible to rule: they choose the WORST friends ...

[Raenelle]

3. Leave it to the Regime. When they DO apologize,

when they do try to be humble and own up to their mistakes, it's the wrong fucking mistakes. We should have been more aggressive, we some have used more violence--arrrrghhhh.

[matcom]

4. got news for ya. it WASN'T IRAQI MUSTARD GAS

Saddam didn't gas them at all. it was Iranian blood agent that killed them, NOT Iraqi mustard gas.

[w13rd0]

8. I think you are confusing...

...the Shia uprisings and the gassing of the Kurds...

[matcom]

14. not at all. talking about the Kurds

my father was in ME Intelligence at the time. others have spoken out about it too

[treepig]

10. more information . . .

THE TRUTH - 1991 CIA REPORT TOLD US GOVERNMENT THAT THE IRANIANS CARRIED
OUT THE ATTACK

The truth of the Halabja incident is in reality very different to that which Bush and his media allies push out.

The CIA's own senior political analyst during the Iran Iraq war, Stephen C. Pelletiere, who was responsible for drawing up a report for the US government on the incident, stated very firmly that the Iranians, and not the Iraqis, were responsible for the massacre of Kurds by chemicals at Halabja in 1988. Pelletiere's report was in fact published in the New York Times on 31 January 2003. (4)

Pelletiere explained in the New York Times his background to the affair:

"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." (5)

Pelletiere continues:

"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." (6)

"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." (7)

from http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/Middle_East/gassings.htm

[matcom]

15. thank you

this myth always makes my blood boil

[Red_Viking]

5. I thought my head would explode when I heard this

I was listening to NPR this morning, getting ready for work, when this little tidbit came on. Now, I know NPR is not the Howard Stern show, but sometimes they do manage to squeeze in a little news. Anyway, I ran into the kitchen where Secret Shopper was busy doing dishes, and told him my head was going to explode.

Do these people have NO SHAME WHATSOEVER?

Maybe they just have a really good sense of irony, like an accomplished movie director?

I still can't figure it out, but yep, color me pissed as well. Since I'm a redhead, and a woman, when I get pissed, you know about it.

We must rid the country of these lying fascists in 2004.

:dem:

RV

[emad]

6. GHWB: arch criminal, mass murderer and world's no 1 deceiver

His speciality has always been planting 'safe' dictators in global hotspots where US has zero chance of influence but might like to do a dirty deal on oil/weapons/manipulation of scarce resources. He and Thatcher created Osama bin Laden to light the touch paper and provide impetus for a second Iraq war.
The closer it gets to re election time for the 2004, the better: when Dumbo and Cheney are busted, they'll bring down the whole filthy Bush matrix. Too many people have waited for too long for this not to happen.

[Terwilliger]

7. You folks seem to forget that Democrats authorized all this

do you think this is all just at the feet of BushCo and the Repukes? You've got another thing coming!

[maha]

9. Do you have any links?

... to what Democrats, Liberals, and Amnesty International etc. were saying in 1988? Thanks for all help ...

My DU article on The Gassing of the Kurds

[treepig]

12. here's what a couple were saying in april 1990

12th April 1990
A US delegation (consisting of Senators Bob Dole, Alan Simpson, Howard
Mitzenbaum and James McClure) visited Saddam Hussein, being concerned
about the threatened imposition of sanctions since their grain states
had quite a large stake in Iraqi imports, to express concern about
Iraq's development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and about
the recent threats against Israel.... Senator Alan Simpson explained to
Saddam: "Democracy is a difficult thing. I think the troubles you have
are with the Western media, not with the American government. the press
is full of itself..."

http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1999/msg00009.html

note the bi-partisan sucking up to saddam a couple years after the gassing incident (Mitzenbaum and McClure were democrats).

[maha]

16. I miss Howard Metzenbaum.

Thank you for the link.

[zbdent]

13. Well, how about this for a reference of Democrats who spoke out

about the gassing of the Kurds, along with other Saddam crimes.

Maybe you'll even get Specter's quote.

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/r101query.html

It's called the Congressional Record. Type in "gas kurds" without the quotes into the search area. Fire away.

If the Congressional Record isn't a qualified source, I don't know what is.

[treepig]

17. ok, for argument's sake

let's accept your allegation that democrats and liberals were speaking out against saddam's gassing of the kurds.

if they were, they were actually helping to develop and perpetuate the currently used lie that "saddam gassed his own people" - the kurds were actually killed by iranian gas!

[maha]

19. I'm aware of the Pelletier article in the Times

... but I don't buy it. It's possible, but the bulk of the evidence points to Saddam. I think it's possible the Reagan Administration tried to spread disinformation that the gassing had been done by Iranians, and Pelletier fell for it.

Discussed in more detail here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/02/08_gassing.html

[zbdent]

22. Any freeper/neo-con who actually was able to make the

argument that it was the Iranians who gassed the Kurds would immediately have their head explode, because then their own arguments for invading Iraq would be nullified. No WMDs? "Well, we really were there because Saddam was brutal, he gassed his own people!" Oh really? The Iranians did this. "DOES NOT COMPUTE! RUSH SAID SO!"

Did you actually look there to see any of the quotes?

[maha]

18. Some time back I spent a lot of time researching this.

... including the Congressional Record, thanks. But CG really didn't tell me what liberals et al. were saying at the time.

[treepig]

21. and thanks for re-posting the link to your informative article

i seemed to have unfortunately missed it the first time around.

tangentially, there should be some type of requirment, however unconstitutional it may be, that everyone who votes should have to be aware of this information before being allowed to vote.

[Noordam]

11. Did SH Gas the Kurds Iran is my bet from this article.

http://foi.missouri.edu/polinfoprop/warcrime.html

A War Crime or an Act of War?


By Stephen C. Pelletiere
The New York Times
January 31, 2003

,cut>

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.

[maha]

20. Don't be too sure.

I think Pelletier was taken in by Reagan Administration disinformation.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/02/08_gassing.html