|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: Doug Henwood
|| (...)
|| From: Jude Wanniski <jwanniski at polyconomics.com> (...)
|| 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
||
This article from Washington Report confirms the Pelletiere thesis. http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1088/8810051.htm There's also confirmation that the gas was cyanide from the KDP: http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html There's a post at the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq site that says: http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00014.html "according to a report, elaborated by an american commission, the Army War College Team and the Department of US Defence, affirmatively state that Halabja has been "gazzed" by the Iranian Army. And also the Red Cross (I 've read this in 1990 in the newspaper) was quite sure at that time it was the Iranian Army that used the cyanide. The Pentagon even stated that " we know the types of gaz that are used by Iran and Iraq. Iraq doesn't use cyanide", or something like that. The report has been resumed in the Washington Post of 04 mai 1990.
However the senate testimony of British geneticist Christine Gosden (below) squarely blames Iraq, but notes Iran used the Kurds as a human shield:
Hakki
http://www.usembassy.ro/USIS/Washington-File/100/98-04-27/eur105.htm (...) The Attack on Halabja
Let me begin by describing the poison gas attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja. This was, let me emphasize, the largest-scale chemical weapons (CW) attack against a civilian population in modern times.
Halabja was a bustling city in Northern Iraq with a population which was predominantly Kurdish and had sympathised with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The population at the time of the attack was about 80,000 people. Troops from the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) entered Halabja on 15th March 1988 amidst heavy resistance from Iraqi security and military forces.
Halabja fell to the PUK troops (accompanied by Iranian revolutionary guards) four hours later. The Iraqis responded with heavy artillery fire and an early wave of six aircraft bombarded an area near Halabja with ordinary high explosives. The civilians had been prevented from leaving the town by the PUK, hoping that the Iraqis would not attack a town with civilians in it -- thus providing a human shield.
The CW attack began early in the evening of March 16th, when a group of eight aircraft began dropping chemical bombs; the chemical bombardment continued all night. According to Kurdish commanders on the scene, there were 14 aircraft sorties during the night, with seven to eight planes in each group, and they concentrated their attack on the city and all the roads leading out of Halabja. The chemical attacks continued until the 19th. Iraqi planes would attack for about 45 minutes and then, after they had gone, another group would appear 15 minutes later.
Let me emphasize that this was not the first chemical attack by Saddam Hussein. Previous attacks had been launched by Iraqi aircraft against 20 small villages in 1987. However, the scale and intensity of the chemical campaign against Halabja was entirely different -- this was the first time that chemical weapons had been used on a major civilian population of this size. The victims of the attack included women, children and the elderly.
Saddam Hussein's Chemical "Cocktail"
There is something else that sets Halabja apart from other known chemical weapons attacks -- including the Aum Shinrikyo attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. The Halabja attack involved multiple chemical agents -- including mustard gas, and the nerve agents SARIN, TABUN and VX. Some sources report that cyanide was also used. It may be that an impure form of TABUN, which has a cyanide residue, released the cyanide compound. Most attempts directed to developing strategies against chemical or biological weapons have been directed towards a single threat. The attack on Halabja illustrates the importance of careful tactical planning directed towards more than one agent, and specific knowledge about the effects of each of the agents. (...)