[b]Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defence[/b]

[HKRockChick]

news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=...1088790524



Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defence



Sanjay Suri, Inter Press Service (IPS)



LONDON, Jul 2 (IPS) Evidence offered by a top CIA (news - web sites) man could confirm the testimony given by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) 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 (news - web sites) 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 (news - web sites) 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 (news - web sites) 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.

[DreamTone7]

Interesting how US and British involvement in the matters of weapons in Iraq are the only ones mentioned. France, Germany, and other countries involvement are left out for some reason. Then I saw the source...Inter Press. Then it made sense. In this case, telling half the truth is akin to telling a lie because it infers all blame for weapons onto only two countries.



Interesting also is the fact the the country where the Kurds were gassed is far away from the Iran-Iraq border...it's hard to believe that Iran wasted their gas on a relatively insignificant target. Militarily, it makes no sense at all. But then Inter Press can't be bothered with things that are inconvenient to their agenda. I think it much more likely that Iraq had a blood agent that we just didn't know about. And I would seriously question as to how we got ahold of a Kurd body for an autopsy to determine what the cause of death was. With that in mind, the gas could as easily have been Serin...a nerve agent. Mustard gas is obvious because it leaves blisters on the skin that might show in a decent photo. But a nerve agents and blood agents don't show any such tell-tale signs of use.



I would say that this article raises some questions that we (and others) need to try to answer, but comes a long way from burying the issue as Inter Press would have you do.



Welcome back HKRC.

[HKRockChick]

Quote:

---

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.

---

I'm betting somebody will put a hit on this Pelletier guy... or of course, suppress the trail to public viewing/hearing in the US, which apparently has already started...



Thank God for the internet!

[questionnaire]

.... it asks some questions. Saddam, Iran, Turks, CIA - who knows who gassed the Kurdish people?



But during the build-up to the Iraqi invasion the possibility that Saddam gassed the Kurds was presented as received knowledge. Why weren't questions asked in public before now?

[HKRockChick]

Bush, cheney, rumsfeld, wolfowitz, oh, sharon too. They all need to be tried for war crimes along with saddam. and clinton as well now.



War crime immunity shall be a thing of a the past.



Amen for the day.

[DreamTone7]

By your rules, HK, there probably isn't a public leader in the existing world that at one time or another hasn't warranted war crimes trial! An exaggeration, of course...but it does display that you do not always take all of the facts into consideration in the same way for each individual when making accusations against them. You apply them on a case-by-case basis for a desired effect...just like the media. This again demonstrates some kind of agenda with regards to Bush...and I am beginning to wonder if you are even aware of it within yourself. Not a personal attack...just a supposition as to why you do not apply facts in an equivical manner.

[bbchris]

If a leader really tries to fulfill his role of ruling his country and setting a good example to his people, I can only think of one clear example and that's Ghandi. Are there others who were deemed good leaders and the people of their country genuinely love? Need to brush up on history here!!!

|Blah Blah|Thinking Out Loud|Jane Eliz||Talk Soup |

[HKRockChick]

so how many other countries have invaded/bombed/covertly promoted coups and insurrections/ousted democraticly elected leaders in other countries in the last 50 years, and what has happened to the leaders of those countries that did these actions...

[DreamTone7]

Hmmm. Interesting question. Although unloved leaders do not necessarily warrant a trial, there certainly have not been many that were both loved and were good leaders. I can think of some American presidents that fit the bill...you did say by their "own" people.



One I can think of that all except his enemies loved was King Arthur...though some say he was a fictitious person. And let's not forget Christ...Lord of all Creation. He's been dead for about 2,000 years now and there are many who still love him!

[DreamTone7]

BTW HK...I would argue that there is nobody who quite fits your description.

[HKRockChick]

you would.