Over the weekend, President Bush and Vice President Cheney both repeated the charge that Saddam Hussein had used poison gas to kill his own citizens. I believe the charge is without merit. I have based my conviction on the only official US government investigation of the 1988 events that has been made public, a 1990 report of the Army War College team. The team was headed by Dr. Stephen Pelletiere, who through the previous decade had been the chief intelligence officer for Iraq at the CIA compound at Langley. I called Pelletiere early last week to see if he had changed his mind in the decade since, and he advised me that he is more persuaded now than he had been, and that "You are on solid ground in stating that Saddam did not gas his own people." Pelletiere, 70, is now retired, living in Mechanicsburg, Pa., and writing another book.
If you are interested, please link to my website for the two memos I've sent to Karl Rove on the subject. I chose Rove because he is the one counselor who has only one job, looking after the President's interests.
today's http://polyconomics.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=1922
yesterday's http://polyconomics.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=1920