Another excuse called into question

This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on July 8, 2004). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

One of the many excuses for our invasion of Iraq (once we couldn’t find any WMDs or any connection to 9-11) was that Saddam was a bad, bad man and needed to be seriously spanked, as evidenced by the fact that he gassed his own people, ordering the use of nerve gas against Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in March of 1988.

And, just like all the other excuses we’ve been given, this one is being called into question, and may not be true.

Evidence offered by a top CIA man could confirm the testimony given by Saddam Hussein at the opening of his trial in Baghdad Thursday that he knew of the Halabja massacre only from the newspapers.

Thousands were reported killed in the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in the north of Iraq in March 1988 towards the end of Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran. The gassing of the Kurds has long been held to be the work of Ali Hassan al-Majid, named in the West because of that association as ‘Chemical Ali’. Saddam Hussein is widely alleged to have ordered Ali to carry out the chemical attack.

The Halabja massacre is now prominent among the charges read out against Saddam in the Baghdad court. When that charge was read out, Saddam replied that he had read about the massacre in a newspaper. Saddam has denied these allegations ever since they were made.

…the CIA boss has gone public with his evidence, and this evidence has been in the public domain for more than a year.

The CIA officer Stephen C. Pelletiere was the agency’s senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. As professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, he says he was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf.

In addition, he says he headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States, and the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

Pelletiere went public with his information on no less a platform than The New York Times in an article on January 31 last year titled ‘A War Crime or an Act of War?’

A little web searching led me to a copy of Pelletiere’s article from the Times.

The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq’s “gassing its own people,” specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein.

But the truth is, 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.

…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.

Now, there were enough records of human rights violations in Iraq under Hussein’s rule that I in no way doubt that he is a bad, bad man who needs to be soundly spanked. However, from everything I’ve read to date, it very strongly appears that he told the truth when he said that Iraq had no WMDs, and he told the truth when he said that he heard of the Halabja massacre through the media, and did not order the gas attack.

It’s a little sad when there seem to be more verifiable instances of Saddam Hussein telling the truth than there are of the Bush administration.

(via Holden)