- A Stephen C. Pelletiere commentary appeared in the January
31, 2003 New York Times, yet no one seems to have noticed. Here is part
of what he wrote about frequent statements that Saddam Hussein gassed 5000
Kurds at Halabja in 1991:
-
- ...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.
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- These facts have long been in the public domain but,
extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely
mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not
make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that
Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report
is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was
skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against
Iran.
-
- I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam
Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses.
But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide
is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of
the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of
war.
-
- The Baathist regime did kill thousands of Kurds
during fighting to suppress occasional uprisings by what Americans call
gangs or terror groups. Iran, Turkey and Syria have also killed thousands
of Kurds, and of course the USA has killed thousands of innocent Iraqis
to maintain order, albeit unintentionally. A better example of a government
leader using chemicals to "gas his own people" occurred in 1993
near Waco, Texas.
-
- Bush Administration defies the Geneva Conventions
-
- In February 2003, the Geneva-based International
Red Cross ruled that Muslims captured in Afghanistan <http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/02/08/ret.cuba.redcross/>were
Prisoners of War (POWs) and entitled to the protections afforded by the
<http://www.redcross.org/museum/gc.html>Geneva Conventions. The
Bush administration rejected this decision and shocked the world community
by openly defying the Geneva Conventions and insisting the POWs were "detainees".
America's corporate media ignored this story, implying that each head-of-state
is allowed to interpret the Geneva Conventions however he pleases. The
International Committee of the Red Cross is charged with interpreting the
Geneva conventions and using diplomacy to encourage compliance. The world
is outraged as the US military continues to violate the Geneva Conventions
by interrogating POWs for long periods while boasting some will be executed.
- The Bush administration claimed that the execution
of six German saboteurs during World War II set a precedent. However,
a formal state of war existed at that time after a declaration of war by
the US Congress, and those Germans were captured in the USA with plans
for specific attacks, unlike the current prisoners who were captured on
a battlefield overseas. The Bush Administration ordered soldiers at the
US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (called Gitmo) to call their POWs
"detainees." Gitmo was chosen because of its unique status of
a parcel of territory occupied against the will of a host nation. Cuba
objects to the continued occupation of Gitmo and its use as a prison.
The base was established after the Spanish-American war and no longer serves
any military purpose.
-
- American military officers are taught the rules
of the Geneva Conventions and told they must ignore illegal orders which
violate these treaties, even if they come from "temporary occupants
of the White House" as General Douglas MacArthur once described.
This caused conflicts last year as a courageous General in charge of security
at Gitmo, Brigadier General Rick Baccus, insisted on obeying the Geneva
Conventions by referring to the prisoners as POWs. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2332719.stm>Baccus
was removed after irritating Major General Michael Dunlavey, who is in
charge of interrogating the prisoners, with his decision to allow the Red
Cross to put up posters advising detainees they need only provide their
name, rank and number during questioning.
-
- Meanwhile, quiet resistance within the US military
delayed plans for military tribunals, avoiding another violation of the
Geneva Conventions. The British sent stern warnings that executing British
citizens deemed POWs by the Red Cross would not be tolerated, so their
six citizens have been excused from death threats. This past Summer, after
months of private discussions about POW treatment at Gitmo, the Red Cross
openly declared the US Government in violation of the Geneva Conventions
based upon first hand reports from Cuba. Food quality and exercise rights
were tied to cooperation during interrogations, <http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20031008_216.html>reports
of physical torture emerged, and it was revealed that three boys under
age 16 were in custody. Since Gitmo was run as a high security facility
with all activities considered secret, Gitmo commanders were enraged at
the prospect of facing an international war crimes tribunal in the future.
-
- Three people who worked among POWs at Gitmo were
promptly arrested, and espionage was suggested as the reason. The most
noteworthy "spy" was US Army Captain James Yee, who was found
to have notes about POWs in a briefcase when he flew into Jacksonville,
Florida, which is not uncommon for a chaplain. This West Point graduate
was not imprisoned at the Army stockade at nearby Fort Stewart as is customary;
he was transported to a maximum security Navy Brig at Charleston, South
Carolina, where three other US citizens are <http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0339/hentoff.php>held
without charges or access to lawyers. Yee was not <http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/7100374.htm>formally
charged within 45 days as required and not allowed free pending charges
as is customary for a simple accusation of "mishandling classified
information." Yee was recently released after 76 days of confinement
and charged with failing to use proper cover sheets for classified documents.
Prosecutors also charged him with adultery and viewing pornographic material
on a government computer. Since most US servicemen can be charged with
such "crimes", a strong message has been sent to every soldier
at Gitmo to keep his mouth shut.
-
- According to an October 24, 2003 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9560-2003Oct23?language=printer>article
in the Washington Post,
-
- Military authorities launched an investigation of Army
Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay prison, after
a series of confrontations between him and officials over the treatment
of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees there, according to military officials
and other informed sources.
-
- Yee, who ministered to the inmates at the U.S. Navy prison
in Cuba, protested what he believed were lives of unrelieved tension and
boredom experienced by his fellow Muslims in captivity, the officials and
other sources said.
-
- Some interrogators at the prison complex objected after
concluding that Yee's private, one-on-one meetings with inmates interfered
with their attempts to fully control the prisoners' environment, numerous
sources said. Some detainees appeared less cooperative in interrogations
after visits from Yee, the sources said.
-
- Apparently, the senior intelligence officer at
Gitmo, US Army Colonel Jack Farr, crossed his superiors too. On November
29, 2003 he was charged with "wrongfully transporting classified material
without the proper security container on or around Oct. 11, 2003"
and lying to investigators. Criminal charges for such petty violations
are extremely rare, and indicate retribution for reasons which remain secret.
-
- Iraq Reconstruction Contract Awarded in 2001
-
- Someone in the Pentagon noted the US Army posted
this <http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/cepa/iraq/factsheet.htm>contract
announcement on the Internet. No one in the media except <http://www.d-n-i.net/>Chuck
Spinney's website took note. Here are three parts:
-
- The U.S. had grounds to believe Saddam was planning to
destroy Iraq's own oil infrastructure in the event of hostilities.
-
- The planning effort was done by Brown & Root Services
(BRS)* under a task order issued under the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation
Program (LOGCAP) contract. The Commander, CENTCOM, identified a requirement
for contingency planning for repairing and providing for continuity of
operations of the Iraqi oil infrastructure. This included planning for
extinguishing oil well fires and assessing damage to oil facilities in
the immediate aftermath of hostilities.
-
- *The government contracted with BRS to perform the planning
effort because BRS is the Army's contractor for the Logistics Civil Augmentation
Program (LOGCAP). The LOGCAP contract is used to develop plans to address
such requirements of Combatant Commanders. When a specific plan is needed,
a task order is issued under the contract. The current LOGCAP contract
was awarded to BRS on December 14, 2001, after a competitive source selection
process.
-
- Note the date, December 14, 2001, almost a year
before the Bush administration began to alert Americans that urgent action
was required to eliminate Saddam Hussein, which later included all "Baathists"
in Iraq, and then the entire Iraqi Army. Brown & Root Services is
part of the Halliburton Corporation which has won dozens of lucrative
Iraqi reconstruction projects awarded without competitive bidding. Vice
President Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton for five years before quitting
to join President Bush's campaign in 2000. He left Halliburton nearly
bankrupt after a disastrous oil deal in Brazil and a merger with dying
Dresser Industries. Nevertheless, Cheney received $20 million in severance
pay from Halliburton, and continues to receive deferred compensation of
around $150,000 a year.
-
-
- <http://www.g2mil.com/Dec2003.htm>http://www.g2mil.com/Dec2003.htm
|
