Let's Make Change
Bombshell! turns out Saddam DIDN'T gas the Kurds
Sun Jul 4, 2004 16:17
64.140.158.6

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [apfn-1] Bombshell! turns out Saddam DIDN'T gas the Kurds & the DoD knew the truth
Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 15:03:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Let's Make Change nasf_reachout@yahoo.ca

surprise surprise, not!


"Jim Senyszyn" wrote:
SADDAM COULD CALL CIA IN HIS DEFENCE
Fri Jul 2, 1:58 PM ET
Sanjay Suri, Inter Press Service (IPS)
http://tinyurl.com/3cs4x

LONDON, Jul 2 (IPS) 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. But now with a trial on,
he could summon a witness in his defence
with the potential to blow apart the
charge and create one of the greatest
diplomatic disasters the United States
has ever known.

A report prepared by the top CIA official
handling the matter says Saddam Hussein
was not responsible for the massacre, and
indicates that it was the work of Iranians.
Further, the Scott inquiry on the role of
the British government has gathered
evidence that following the massacre the
United States in fact armed Saddam Hussein
to counter the Iranians chemicals for
chemicals.

Few believe that a CIA man would attend a
court hearing in Baghdad in defence of
Saddam. But in this case 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?' The article which
challenged the case for war quoted U.S.
President George W. Bush as saying:
"The dictator who is assembling the
world's most dangerous weapons has already
used them on whole villages, leaving
thousands of his own citizens dead, blind
or disfigured."

Pelletiere says the United States Defence
Intelligence Agency investigated and
produced a classified report following the
Halabja gassing, 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," he wrote in The
New York Times.

The agency did find that each side used
gas against the other in the battle
around Halabja, he said. "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."

Pelletiere write that these facts have
"long been in the public domain but,
extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja
affair is cited, they are rarely
mentioned."

Pelletiere wrote that Saddam Hussein 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. There may be justifications for
invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of
them."

Pelletiere has maintained his position.
All Saddam would have to do in court now
is to cite The New York Times article even
if the court would not summon Pelletiere.
The issues raised in the article would
themselves be sufficient to raise serious
questions about the charges filed against
Saddam and in turn the justifications
offered last year for invading Iraq.

The Halabja killings were cited not just
by Bush but by British Prime Minister
Tony Blair to justify his case for going
along with a U.S. invasion of Iraq. A
British government dossier released to
justify the war on Iraq says that "Saddam
has used chemical weapons, not only
against an enemy state, but against his
own people."

An inquiry report in 1996 by Lord Justice
Scott in what came to be known as the
arms-to-Iraq affair gave dramatic
pointers to what followed after Halabja.
After the use of poison gas in 1988 both
the United States and Britain began to
supply Saddam Hussein with even more
chemical weapons.

The Scott inquiry had been set up in 1992
following the collapse of the trial in
the case of Matrix Churchill, a British
firm exporting equipment to Iraq that
could be put to military use.

Three senior executives of Matrix
Churchill said the government knew what
Matrix Churchill was doing, and that its
managing director Paul Henderson had been
supplying information about Iraq to the
British intelligence agencies on a
regular basis.

The inquiry revealed details of the
British government's secret decision to
supply Saddam with even more
weapons-related equipment after the
Halabja killings.

Former British foreign secretary Geoffrey
Howe was found to have written that the
end of the Iraq-Iran war could mean
"major opportunities for British
industry" in military exports, but he
wanted to keep that proposal quiet.

"It could look very cynical if so soon
after expressing outrage about the
treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more
flexible approach to arms sales," one
of his officials told the Scott inquiry.
Lord Scott condemned the government's
decision to change its policy, while
keeping MPs and the public in the dark.

Soon after the attack, the United States
approved the export to Iraq of virus
cultures and a billion-dollar contract
to design and build a petrochemical
plant the Iraqis planned to use to
produce mustard gas.

Saddam Hussein has appeared so far without
a lawyer to defend him. A Jordanian firm
is reported to be speaking up for him. But
the real defence for him could be waiting
for him in Washington and London.
--- End forwarded message ---
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http://www.apfn.org/APFN/SADDAM.HTM



Saddam Hussein was not represented by his lawyer on 07/01/04? Why?

Lawyers 'denied access' to Saddam

Saddam's lawyer says he was ‘threatened' by Iraq minister
"The Iraqi justice minister phoned me today and told me: 'If you and the others are thinking of coming to Iraq to defend Saddam, we will not only kill you but we will cut you up in pieces,'" Jordanian lawyer Issam Ghazawi told AFP.
http://www.apfn.org/Saddam-Hussein/lawyer.htm


• Charges against Saddam
*Anfal campaign against Kurds, late 1980s
*Gassing Kurds in Halabja, 1988
*Massacring members of Kurdish Barzani tribe
*Crushing Kurdish and Shia rebellions after Gulf War
*Killing political activists over 30 years
*Killing religious leaders, 1974
*Invasion of Kuwait , 1990
http://www.kurdistanobserver.com/

IRAQGATE
"Spider's Web": United States Illegally Armed Saddam Hussein
2002/11/16 "Spider's Web": The Secret History Of How The United States Illegally Armed Saddam Hussein; "A Conversation With The Journalist Who Broke The Iraqgate Scandal That Involved President George Bush, James Baker And Donald Rumsfeld"
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/iraqgate.htm

• RE" Bombshell Reposted at LibertyForum.org — Provocative1, Sun Jul 4 18:16
• Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing — Robert Fisk, Sun Jul 4 16:26