What follows in the extended copy are 3 chronological articles that detail a line of argument that may be used by Saddam's lawyers to establish reasonable doubt regarding the gassing of his own citizens. This claim is trumpeted so often in the media that most people around the world take it entirely for granted. I apologize for the length, but the articles can't be linked to as they are old and require a copy purchase from the publishers.
- The best un-biased account from April 1988, written by a staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor on the ground in "Halabja, Iranian-occupied Iraq". It highlights Iranian propoganda efforts. Hey if Chalabi could pull it over on us...
- Letter to the Editor that takes a look back after Gulf War I.
- Op-ed that responds to Bush's reference in the 2003 State of the Union Address and points out that the gas could have been Iranian.
1. Christian Science Monitor, April 12, 1988:
Warren Richey, Staff writer
In the north, Iran wages propaganda as well as military battle. Aims to build international pressure on Iraq with tours of devastated area
of Halabja, Iranian-occupied Iraq - A plume of earth and dust rises high into the air as an Iraqi artillery shell explodes in a field to the north. The Iranian pilot points to it, then banks his helicopter hard right for a sweeping view of the valley below. More plumes suddenly rise above the nearby town of Dojaila. The helicopter circles back out of artillery range and flies low over Halabja. From the air the sprawling village appears a ghost town, its narrow streets empty except for debris blasted into the street by bombs dropped from Iraqi jets weeks earlier. The bodies have long since been carried away and buried. Few residents of the Kurdish city remain in their homes. Most who survived Iraq's bombing and chemical attacks here on March 16-18 have fled to northern Iraq or refugee camps in Iran. Many others have been taken to hospitals in Iran for treatment. The helicopter pilot deposits a group of reporters, gas masks slung over their shoulders, on a green pasture west of the village. Suddenly Halabja comes alive with an array of armed men. Today, Halabja is a garrison town for units of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Kurdish guerrillas who helped push Iraqi forces back in the mid-March campaign. The capture of the town and surrounding areas marks the most significant advance of Iranian forces into Iraqi territory since the occupation of the strategic Faw Peninsula in southern Iraq in 1986. But as much as any strategic gain, Iran views the battle at Halabja as having important symbolic value. It is believed to be the first time Iraq has used chemical weapons against a significant concentration of civilians, and Iran is hoping the incident will lead to international efforts to condemn and punish Iraq. (Interview with Iran's deputy foreign minister, Page 11.) That is why, nearly three weeks after Iraq's chemical attacks, Iran is flying helicopter loads of journalists to Halabja to document what Iranian officials maintain are Iraqi war crimes. The Iranians say that more than 5,000 persons died in the chemical attacks. The figure is described as a rough estimate by Iranian military officers. There has been no opportunity to verify independently the number killed or wounded. In the meantime, Iran says it gained strategic artillery positions on heights near the eastern shore of Lake Darbandikhan. Iranian forces are reported to be close to capturing the dam with electricity generating turbines at the southern end of the lake. Iranian officials stress that a more important objective is the ability of Iranian artillery to disrupt troop and supply movements along the key road from the Iraqi stronghold at Sulaymaniyah to Kalar and other cities to the south. "Any kind of movement Iraq has, they see it, and they hit it," says Sadiq Sadiq, an officer with the Revolutionary Guards stationed in the region. Iranian military officials note that the only other major supply road to Sulaymaniyah runs through areas where Kurdish guerrillas are active. Farther north in the valley northwest of Halabja, Iranian forces are reported to be just outside the town of Sayyid Sadiq. Iranian officials are predicting the town will fall soon. The Iraqis have heavily bombed the town. The Iranians say they will continue their push until they capture the provincial capital, Sulaymaniyah. The city is separated by about 50 miles of very mountainous terrain from Iraq's important Kirkuk oil fields. But an Iranian official who had been on the Halabja campaign suggested a broader Iranian strategy. He said that in Iran's view there are three doors leading to an invasion and eventual fall of Iraq: one at Sulaymaniyah, one at Basra, and one at the central warfront east of Baghdad. The official said that at present all three doors are closed, meaning that Iraq has substantial forces at each area to hold off the numerically superior Iranians. But if Iran was able to make a significant breakthrough (such as the threatened capture of Sulaymaniyah), triggering an emergency shift of Iraqi forces from other areas, a door somewhere else would open as reinforcements and equipment were moved north from the central warfront or Basra. He suggested that Iran would capitalize on any significant shift in Iraqi force strength by launching counterattacks in the weaker areas. Under such circumstances the Iraqis are thought by military analysts to be likely to once again resort to the use of chemical weapons to halt an Iranian invasion. This is one reason Iran is pushing for international condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. They are hoping that condemnation of Iraq's use of chemical weapons against civilians will help prevent Iraq's future use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers. That would help, in Iran's view, to clear the way for an all-out invasion of Iraq. In the meantime, a debate has begun about whether Iran, too, has used chemical weapons on the warfront. Iraq maintains that Iran has used such weapons and has produced injured Iraqi soldiers as proof. Iran says that Iraq may have mistakenly bombed its own troops. ``We have absolutely refrained from the use of chemical weapons in spite of the fact that we have the capability to produce and deploy them," Kamal Kharrazi, head of Iran's War Information Headquarters, said last week. But he added, "You have to know our patience has limits. We are now waiting for international bodies to do something to prevent the continued use of chemical weapons by our enemy. At this stage it doesn't mean we aren't going to use chemical weapons." Since the Halabja attacks, Iran has accused Iraq of continuing to carry out chemical weapons attacks. From March 21-26, Iran says, Iraq chemically bombed five Kurdish villages in the vicinity of Qara Dagh, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq. And on April 2 and 3, Iran says, Iraq dropped chemical weapons on three villages near Paveh in Iran, injuring 15 civilians. The reports could not be independently verified. Requests last week to visit Paveh were denied by Iranian officials. An Iraqi pilot shot down and captured by Iran on March 17 in a region south of Halabja said he was surprised when he was shown the Iranian video tape showing that Kurdish civilians had remained in the city with the advancing Iranian forces. He said Iraqi pilots assumed that the Iraqi Kurds of Halabja had fled before the Iranian soldiers arrived in the city. The pilot, Maj. Ahmad Shaker of Iraq's 44th Squadron, is now a prisoner of war held in Tehran. He agreed to speak to reporters and said he had not been forced by Iran to hold the press conference. Major Shaker said that pilots were aware that Iraq from time to time used chemical weapons against Iranian troops if they were threatening to break through Iraqi defensive positions in Iraq. He estimated that 20 to 25 jets, each carrying three or four, "special bombs" took part in the chemical attacks in and around Halabja in mid-March. The pilot denied that he dropped any "special bombs" near Halabja. He admitted, however, that he had dropped chemical weapons on marshy areas outside Basra on the southern warfront in 1983. Shaker, who has a wife and three children in Baghdad, said he didn't consider himself guilty for his involvement in dropping chemical bombs. "We are under orders. We are officers. We have to fly when the orders come," Shaker said. He said that Iraq had two types of chemical weapons, as he put it "one is very dangerous and the other is soft." Iranian officials say Shaker was referring to cyanide bombs, which kill within 10 seconds, and mustard gas, which is slower acting and remains in the air for up to 20 minutes. The Iraqi pilot said, "God will ask us, all of us, about this bad method of killing." And he added, "I ask all nations in the world to put this war in their mind and work and work and work in order to bring an end to the war."
2. Washington Post, November 27, 1992, Page a30
Column: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
GAS ATTACK AGAINST THE KURDS: THE UNTOLD STORY
DONALD NEFF, Washington
Now that the gulf war is long over, isn't it time for The Post to stop its wartime chauvinism of repeating inflammatory propaganda that Iraq's Saddam Hussein poison gassed his own people in March 1988, during the Iran-Iraq War {"Site of Iraqi Gas Attack Is Being Rebuilt," Nov 16}.
Though the media eagerly used the Halabja poison gas story during the war to paint Saddam Hussein a monster -- which he is, but for other reasons -- the fact is that thoughtful analysts have doubted for years that such a deliberate attack actually took place. Furthermore, the fatalities involved probably numbered in the hundreds, not the thousands.
No American newspaper bothered investigating the incident during the heat of battle. But afterward the New York Times finally got around to it and discovered (apparently to its embarrassment, since it buried the story deep inside its April 28, 1991 edition) that an unidentified Bush administration official had reviewed intelligence on Halabja and concluded that both sides used gas -- against each other, but probably not deliberately against the civilians of Halabja: "There probably wasn't an attempt by either side to kill the villagers, but instead they were fighting over the territory." He said casualties of civilians were probably closer to the hundreds rather than thousands killed.
This conclusion supported doubts about the media version that was expressed months earlier -- before the war -- in a prescient monograph by Army War College analysts Stephen Pelletiere, Douglas Johnson and Leif Rosenberger titled "Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East." At a time when the media was filled with references to Saddam Hussein as a leader who gasses his own people -- what better sadistic image could the war crowd want? -- Pelletiere, Douglas and Rosenberger were on record expressing doubts that he had committed any such atrocity. But nobody in the media bothered picking up this intriguing item or investigating it. Now two years have passed, and The Post is still perpetuating the falsehood, which plays only into thehands of hatemongers and obscures reality.
3. New York Times, January 31, 2003:
A War Crime Or an Act of War?
Stephen C. Pelletiere (Op-Ed)
It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: "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."
The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein.
But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.
I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.
This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.
And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, 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.
The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. 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.
These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran.
I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He 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.
In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq.
We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region.
Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.
Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades -- not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein's Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies.
All that is needed to get us into war is one clear reason for acting, one that would be generally persuasive. But efforts to link the Iraqis directly to Osama bin Laden have proved inconclusive. Assertions that Iraq threatens its neighbors have also failed to create much resolve; in its present debilitated condition -- thanks to United Nations sanctions -- Iraq's conventional forces threaten no one.
Perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his people. And the most dramatic case are the accusations about Halabja.
Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive regimes Washington supports?