Could we say, "Any country willing to napalm the inhabitants of another is a threat to the world?"
Anyway, has anyone come up with a definitive answer to Gulf War syndrome? Was it the DU? If so, can we then say that "any country willing to expose its own soldiers to poison is a threat to the world?"
None of which is, of course, to be construed as a defence, oblique or not, of Baghdad's use of gas in the Iran-Iraq war. But that it should even be necessary to add such a disclaimer is yet another proof of the ideological power and hegemony of the US/Washington.
kj
Michael Pugliese wrote:
>http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/current/0072.html
>pms (Not Pillsbury, Madison, Sutro, LLP!)
>>...Wasn't there also the story of James Baker intervening
>aggressivly to release money Saddam was getting through Agricultural
>subsidies?
>http://www.google.com/search?q=Agriculture+Administration+Iraq+credits
>
>http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992/h920519l.htm
>http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2000/msg00776.html
>http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1991/03/mm0391_04.html
>http://hnn.us/articles/862.html
>7-16-02: Fact & Fiction
>
>He Has Gassed His Own People
>
>"Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people,
>willing to use weapons of mass destruction against Iraq citizens.
>"--President Bush, March 22, 2002
>
>"As he said, any person that would gas his own people is a threat to
>the world."--Scott McClellan, White House spokesman, May 31, 2002
>
>Over the past six months President Bush has repeatedly reminded the
>public that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people. What he has
>neglected to mention is that at the time Saddam did so the United
>States did nothing to stop him. Indeed, as Samantha Power makes
>clear in an account in her new book, A Problem from Hell: America in
>the Age of Genocide, the United States refused even to condemn the
>killing of civilians.
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465061508/qid%3D1026861843/sr%3D1-1/ref%3Dsr_1_1/102-2303332-1730504
>The infamous gas attack took place in mid-March 1988 in the Kurdish
>town of Halabja, the crossroads of an ongoing battle waged between a
>joint Kurdish-Iranian force and the Iraqi army. Caught in the
>middle were innocent civilians, including women and children.
>
>From Power's account:
>
>"It was different from the other bombs," one witness remembered.
>"There was a huge sound, a huge flame and it had very destructive
>ability. If you touched one part of your body that had been burned,
>your hand burned also. It caused things to catch fire." The planes
>flew low enough for the petrified Kurds to take note of the
>markings, which were those of the Iraqi air force. Many families
>tumbled into primitive air-raid shelters they had built outside
>their homes. When the gasses seeped through the cracks, they poured
>out into the streets in a panic. There they found friends and family
>frozen in time like a modern version of Pompeii: slumped a few yards
>behind a baby carriage, caught permanently holding the hand of a
>loved one or shielding a child from the poisoned air, or calmly
>collapsed behind a car steering wheel.
>
>Halabja was the "most notorious and the deadliest single gas attack
>against the Kurds," killing 5,000 civilians. But as Power notes, it
>was just one of some forty chemical assaults staged by Iraq against
>the Kurdish people.
>
>The official U.S. government reaction to Halabja? At first the
>government downplayed the reports, which were coming from Iranian
>sources. Once the media had confirmed the story and pictures of the
>dead villagers had been shown on television, the U.S. denounced the
>use of gas. Marlin Fitzwater told reporters, "Everyone in the
>administration saw the same reports you saw last night. They were
>horrible, outrageous, disgusting and should serve as a reminder to
>all countries of why chemical warfare should be banned." But as
>Power observes, "The United States issued no threats or demands."
>The government's objection was that Saddam had used gas to kill his
>own citizens, not that he had killed them. Indeed, subsequently
>State Department officials indicated that both sides--Iraq and
>Iran--were responsible perhaps for the gassing of civilian Kurds.
>
>On August 20, 1988 Iran and Iraq ended their war. Within days Iraq
>again gassed the Kurds. A front-page story in the New York Times
>summed up the purpose of the latest assault: "Iraq has begun a major
>offensive [meant to] crush the 40-year-long insurgency once and for
>all." After a delay of weeks Secretary of State George Shultz
>condemned the assaults. But the United States again failed to act,
>even as hundreds of thousands of Kurds were being uprooted from
>their homes and forced into the mountains, tens of thousands killed.
>By 1989, says Powers, 4,049 Kurdish villages had been destroyed.
>
>Why had the United States not acted? That was what William Safire
>and a few other columnists in the media wanted to know. Years later
>James Baker explained:
>
>Diplomacy--as well as the American psyche--is fundamentally biased
>toward "improving relations." Shifting a policy away from
>cooperation toward confrontation is always a more difficult
>proposition--particularly when support for existing policy is as
>firmly embedded among various constituencies and bureaucratic
>interests as was the policy toward Iraq."
>
>Domestic special interests had a stake in the survival of Saddam.
>Exports to Iraq of American agricultural products were large: 23
>percent of U.S. rice exports went to Iraq; a million tons of wheat.
>When members of Congress threatened to pass a sanctions bill against
>Iraq, the White House opposed the measure.
>
>In 1989 President George Herbert Walker Bush took power and ordered
>a review of United States policy toward Iraq. According to Power:
>
>The study ... deemed Iraq a potentially helpful ally in containing
>Iran and nudging the Middle East peace process ahead. The
>"Guidelines for U.S.- Iraq Policy" swiped at proponents of sanctions
>on Capital Hill and a few human rights advocates who had begun
>lobbying within the State Department. The guidelines noted that
>despite support from the Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, and State
>Departments for a profitable, stable U.S.-Iraq relationship, "parts
>of Congress and the Department would scuttle even the most benign
>and beneficial areas of the relationship, such as agricultural
>exports." The Bush administration would not shift to a policy of
>dual containment of both Iraq and Iran. Vocal American businesses
>were adamant that Iraq was a source of opportunity, not enmity. The
>White House did all it could to create an opening for these
>companies"Had we attempted to isolate Iraq," Secretary of State
>James Baker wrote later, "we would have also isolated American
>businesses, particularly agricultural interests, from significant
>commercial opportunities."
>
>Powers mordantly comments: "Hussein locked up another $1 billion in
>agricultural credits. Iraq became the ninth largest purchaser of
>U.S. farm products.... As Baker put it gently in his memoirs, 'Our
>administration's review of the previous Iraq policy was not immune
>from domestic economic considerations.'"