[extropy-chat] urban sprawl as defense

[Matus]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
>
> >> Don't worry, she had claimed that the Iraqi invasion would take
> >> 100,000
> >> lives. The occupation hasn't even taken a tenth of that.
> >
> > To be fair, that was not an unreasonable prediction, had Hussein
used
> > chemical weapons and deliberately targeted his own people in an
attempt
> > to scare off the Americans, a scenario I don't find altogether
> > improbable.  A variation of the Blazing Saddles strategy.
> >
> 
> Funny thing about that.  At the time we sent in a military group to
> check out the scene.  They came back with a report that the symptoms
> shown by the victims were actually consistent with the kind of gas,
> different from that used by Iraq, that was in use by Iran.    The
> official story in those days when we were behind Saddam  and his war
> with Iran, was that he *did not* gas his own people.  I don't know if
> he did or didn't.  But I do know that we can't assert it is so without
> some caveats.
> 

Its not funny, some googling reveals what is a reasonable description of
what happened.  I did some digging the last time this claim was made and
posted this to the list.  I had saved it since I knew it would come up
again.

In summary, the MTV News Byte Claim that "Saddam Gassed his own people"
is clearly still true. There is some question about whether Halabja was
only an attack by Saddam which intentionally targeting Kurdish
civilians, with Pelletiers seeming to be one of the few people that
still believe this in an apparent sea of overwhelming evidence, as
suggested in the letters above. But given Saddam's systematic effort to
wipe out Kurds in perhaps 180 other chemical attacks that were in no way
involved with the Iran Iraq war, and not even questioned by Pelletier,
the trumpeting of this particular article of Pelletiers as a anti-war
trophy is clearly an egregiously incorrect interpretation of the facts.

http://www.matus1976.com/politics/saddam_gas_1.htm

To start with, the pretty liberal French Le Monde Diplomatique
(http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn) relays the theory that Saddam
was responsible for the attacks, outlining a history by Hussain, and in
particular Hassan Al Majid's efforts to eradicate the Kurds.

"Hassan Al Majid's chemical experiments began on 15 April. They were
directed against thirty or so villages in the provinces of Suleimaniyeh
and Erbil and proved devastatingly effective. Hundreds died. On 17
April, after a chemical attack that killed 400 people in the Balisan
valley, 286 wounded survivors set out for Erbil in search of medical
attention. They were stopped by the army and shot."

This particular article tells the story of a systematic campaign of
attacks and the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, with the
incident at Halabja being the height of the atrocities.

Note the west, including the US, France, and Germany did little about
this at the time.

Next I would point you to this article published in the Kurdistan
Observer
(http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistanobserver/2-7-02-88-gassing-still-killin
g.html) It is made clear in this article that the Kurds are no fan of
the US, as the chemical weapons used were supplied by the US, the
original event was ignored by the US (note is was also ignored by France
and Germany) and now the US is using it as a rallying call against
Saddam. This particular article estimates ~7,000 died instantly in the
attack on Halajba, and relays that Human Rights Watch estimates that
500,000 to 100,000 people died during the Anfal campaign.

Next I would point you to this page
(http://www.dbarkertv.com/pelletiere.htm) which details responses sent
to the New York Times editorial section after Pelletiere advertisement
for his book, er, I mean, editorial was published. The first response is
from the former United States Ambassador to Croatio, it reads:

"In 1988, as a staff member working for the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, I documented Iraqi chemical weapons attacks on 49 Kurdish
villages in Dihok Province along Iraq's border with Turkey. These
attacks began on Aug. 25, 1988, five days after the Iran-Iraq war ended,
and were specifically targeted on civilians. As a result of the
committee's report, the Senate unanimously approved comprehensive
sanctions on Iraq. Between March 1987 and August 1988, Iraq made
extensive use of chemical weapons against Kurdish villages as part of a
campaign aimed at depopulating rural Kurdistan. These attacks have been
well documented by human rights groups, forensic investigators and the
Kurds themselves. Many occurred in places far from the front line in the
Iran-Iraq war. The Kurdish survivors of the Halabja attack all blame
Iraq, and many report seeing Iraqi markings on the low-flying aircraft
that delivered the lethal gas. While the most deadly, the Halabja attack
was one of between 60 and 180 such attacks that took thousands of
civilian lives." [Emphasis added] 

The next response came from the executive director of Human Rights Watch
Kenneth Roth. it reads:

"Stephen C. Pelletiere writes that Iran, not Iraq, might have been
responsible for the 1988 gassing of Kurdish civilians in Halabja. Human
Rights Watch researchers interviewed survivors from Halabja and reviewed
18 tons of Iraqi state documents to establish beyond doubt that the
attack was carried out by Iraq. Iraqi forces used mustard and nerve
gases, as well as mass executions, to kill some 100,000 Kurds in the
genocidal 1988 Anfal campaign. The commander, Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid,
said of the Kurds, in a taped speech obtained by Human Rights Watch: "I
will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything?
The international community?" The evidence is incontrovertible: Iraq is
responsible for the crime of genocide, committed against its own Kurdish
population. The gassing at Halabja was part of that crime"

The very site you linked for Pelletieres article has this link as a
comment (http://www.krg.org/reference/halabja/index.asp) These are the
official statements by the Kurdish Regional Government on the incident
at Halabja. It says:

"What happened in Halabja? On March 16th 1988, Iraqi jets bombed the
town of Halabja with chemical weapons. At least 5,000 people were killed
and 7,000 severely injured. Fourteen years on, thousands are still
suffering the affects of the chemical weapons"


The Kurds, as I mentioned, seem to be no friend of the US, but are also
highly critical of Saddam (understandable, given his Anfal campaign was
a systematic effort to wipe them off the face of the Earth)

For brevity, I would point you to only one more article.
(http://slate.msn.com/id/2063934/) This particular article was written
in response to Jude Wanniski's incorrect parroting of Pelletiers
argument. It is made clear that Pelletier only questions the involvement
of Iraq in Halajba in particular, note as mentioned before that more
than a hundred other gas attacks by Iraqi's on Kurds also occurred, and
even Pelletier does not question these. This article states:

"Last year, Pelletiere published a book (*) that Wanniski seems to think
argued that Iraq never gassed Iraqi citizens. But as one can plainly see
by scrolling down to the portion of Wanniski's memo (*) that quotes
Pelletiere at length, Pelletiere's claim is that in March 1988, both
Iran and Iraq gassed the Kurdish city of Halabja, which they were
fighting over. Pelletiere's view-which is not widely shared by others-is
that the Iraqis used mustard gas, while the Iranians used a much
deadlier cyanide-based gas, and that it was this cyanide gas that killed
most or all of the thousands of Kurdish civilians who died at Halabja"

And

"Joost Hiltermann of Human Rights Watch is writing a book about Halabja
and other incidents in which the Kurds were gassed. He says that he's
seen no evidence that Iran used chemical warfare during the Iran-Iraq
war and plenty of evidence that Iraq did. Much of the latter is
available online. Here"

Additionally

"United Nations reports from 1986, 1987, and 1988 confirm (based in part
on reports from Iraqi soldiers who had been taken prisoner) that Iraq
used mustard gas and nerve agents in the Iran-Iraq war and that these
killed a growing number of civilians. In 1993, Physicians for Human
Rights found evidence (*) of nerve agents in soil samples in the Kurdish
village of Birjinni and cited Kurdish eyewitnesses who said that one day
in August 1988, they saw Iraqi warplanes drop bombs emitting "a plume of
black, then yellowish smoke" and that shortly thereafter villagers
"began to have trouble breathing, their eyes watered, their skin
blistered, and many vomited-some of whom died. All of these symptoms are
consistent with a poison gas attack." The March 24 New Yorker carries a
lengthy account by Jeffrey Goldberg (*) of Iraq's systematic gassing of
the Kurdish population, based on extensive eyewitness interviews that
Goldberg recently conducted in Halabja and other Kurdish-controlled
areas in Northern Iraq. None of those interviewed seem to doubt that it
was Saddam Hussein's army that gassed them"

(*) - links provided on source page

Finally, for an additional commentary on the subject see -
(http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0204/0355.html)

In summary, the MTV News Byte Claim that "Saddam Gassed his own people"
is clearly still true. There is some (very little) question about
whether Halabja was only an attack by Saddam which intentionally
targeting Kurdish civilians, with Pelletiers seeming to be one of the
few people that still believe this in an apparent sea of overwhelming
evidence, as suggested in the letters above. But given Saddam's
systematic effort to wipe out Kurds in perhaps 180 other chemical
attacks that were in no way involved with the Iran Iraq war, and not
even questioned by Pelletier, the trumpeting of this particular article
of Pelletiers as a anti-war trophy is clearly an egregiously incorrect
interpretation of the facts.

Regards,

Michael Dickey