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Why America needs to be Defeated in Iraq

Thread ID: 18095 | Posts: 24 | Started: 2005-05-04

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Walter Yannis [OP]

2005-05-04 18:00 | User Profile

[URL=http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_17271.shtml]From AxisofLogic.com[/URL] Iraq Why America needs to be Defeated in Iraq By Mike Whitney May 1, 2005, 12:35

May 1, 2005 -- The greatest moral quandary of our day is whether we, as Americans, support the Iraqi insurgency. It’s an issue that has caused anti-war Leftists the same pangs of conscience that many felt 30 years ago in their opposition to the Vietnam War. The specter of disloyalty weighs heavily on all of us, even those who’ve never been inclined to wave flags or champion the notion of American “Exceptionalism”.

For myself, I can say without hesitation that I support the "insurgency", and would do so even if my only 21 year old son was serving in Iraq. There’s simply no other morally acceptable option.

As Americans, we support the idea that violence is an acceptable means of achieving (national) self-determination. This, in fact, is how our nation was formed, and it is vindicated in our founding document, The Declaration of Independence:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, having its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness….when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and provide new guards for their future security."

The Declaration of Independence is revolutionary in its view that we have a “duty” to overthrow regimes that threaten basic human liberties. We must apply this same standard to the Iraqi people. Violence is not the issue, but the justification for the use of violence. The overwhelming majority of the world’s people know that the war in Iraq was an “illegal” (Kofi Annan) act of unprovoked aggression against a defenseless enemy. A recent poll conducted in the Middle East (released by the Center for Strategic Studies) shows that “for more than 85% of the population in four of the five countries polled (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine) thought the US war on Iraq was an act of terrorism”. Lebanon polled at 64%. (Pepe Escobar; “Its Terror when we say so”).

Terrorism or not, there’s no doubt that the vast majority of people in the region and in the world, believe that the war was entirely unjustifiable.

The argument most commonly offered by antiwar Americans (who believe we should stay in Iraq) doesn’t defend the legitimacy of the invasion, but provides the rationale for the ongoing occupation. The belief that “We can’t just leave them without security”, creates the logic for staying in Iraq until order can be established. Unfortunately, the occupation is just another manifestation of the war itself; replete with daily bombings, arrests, torture and the destruction of personal property. Therefore, support of the occupation is a vindication of the war. The two are inseparable.

We should remember that the war (which was entirely based on false or misleading information) was both illegal and immoral. That judgment does not change by maintaining a military presence of 140,000 soldiers on the ground for years to come. Each passing day of occupation simply perpetuates the crime.

At the same time we have to recognize that the disparate elements of Iraqi resistance, belittled in the media as the “insurgency”, are the legitimate expression of Iraqi self-determination.

Independence is not bestowed by a foreign nation; the very nature of that relationship suggests reliance on outside forces. True independence and sovereignty can only be realized when foreign armies are evacuated and indigenous elements assume the reigns of power. (Bush acknowledged this himself when he ordered Syrian troops to leave Lebanon) The character of the future Iraqi government will evolve from the groups who successfully expel the US forces from their country, not the American-approved stooges who rose to power through Washington’s “demonstration elections”. This may not suit the members of the Bush administration, but it’s a first step in the long process of reintegrating and rebuilding the Iraqi state.

There’s no indication that the conduct of the occupation will change anytime soon. If anything, conditions have only worsened over the past two years. The Bush administration hasn’t shown any willingness to loosen its grip on power either by internationalizing the occupation or by handing over real control to the newly elected Iraqi government. This suggests that the only hope for an acceptable solution to the suffering of the Iraqi people is a US defeat and the subsequent withdrawal of troops. Regrettably, we’re nowhere near that period yet.

Who’s killing whom?

It’s not the insurgency that’s killing American soldiers. It’s the self-serving strategy to control 12% of the world’s remaining petroleum and to project American military power throughout the region. This is the plan that has put American servicemen into harm’s way. The insurgency is simply acting as any resistance movement would; trying to rid their country of foreign invaders when all the political channels have been foreclosed.

Americans would behave no differently if put in a similar situation and Iraqi troops were deployed in our towns and cities. Ultimately, the Bush administration bears the responsibility for the death of every American killed in Iraq just as if they had lined them up against a wall and shot them one by one. Their blood is on the administration’s hands, not those of the Iraqi insurgency.

Expect another dictator or Mullah

We shouldn’t expect that, after a long period of internal struggle, the Iraqi leadership will embrace the values of democratic government. More likely, another Iraqi strongman, like Saddam, will take power. In fact, the rise of another dictator (or Ayatollah) is nearly certain given the catastrophic effects of the American-led war. Regardless, it is not the right of the US to pick-and-choose the leaders of foreign countries or to meddle in their internal politics. (The UN, as imperfect as it may be, is the proper venue for deciding how to affect the behavior of foreign dictators.) At this point, we should be able to agree that the people of Iraq were better off under Saddam Hussein in every quantifiable way than they are today. Even on a physical level, the availability of work, clean water, electricity, sewage control, medicine, gas and food were far superior to the present situation. On a deeper level, the insecurity from the sporadic violence, the increasing brutality, and the gross injustice of the occupation has turned Iraq into a prison-state, where the amenities of normal life are nowhere to be found.

Support for the Bush policy is, by necessity, support for the instruments of coercion that are used to perpetuate that occupation. In other words, one must be willing to support the torture at Abu Ghraib, (which continues to this day, according to Amnesty International) the neoliberal policies (which have privatized all of Iraq’s publicly owned industries, banks and resources), an American-friendly regime that excludes 20% (Sunnis) of the population and, worst of all, “the return-in full force-of Saddam’s Mukhabarat agents, now posing as agents of the new Iraqi security and intelligence services.” (Pepe Escobar, Asia Times)

Are Americans prepared to offer their support to the same brutal apparatus of state-terror that was employed by Saddam? (Rumsfeld’s unannounced visit to Baghdad last week was to make sure that the newly elected officials didn’t tamper with hiscounterinsurgency operatives, most of whom were formerly employed in Saddam’s secret police)

We should also ask ourselves what the long-range implications of an American victory in Iraq would be. Those who argue that we cannot leave Iraq in a state of chaos don’t realize that stabilizing the situation on the ground is tantamount to an American victory and a vindication for the policies of aggression. This would be a bigger disaster than the invasion itself. The Bush administration is fully prepared to carry on its campaign of global domination by force unless an unmovable object like the Iraqi insurgency blocks its way. Many suspect, that if it wasn’t for the resistance, the US would be in Tehran and Damascus right now. This, I think, is a rational assumption. For this reason alone, antiwar advocates should carefully consider the implications of “so-called” humanitarian objectives designed to pacify the population. “Normalizing” aggression by ameliorating its symptoms is the greatest dilemma we collectively face.

We should be clear about our feelings about the war and the occupation. The disparate Iraqi resistance is the legitimate manifestation of a national liberation movement. Its success is imperative to the principles of national sovereignty and self-determination; ideals that are revered in the Declaration of Independence. The toppling of foreign regimes and the destruction of entire civilizations cannot be justified in terms of “democracy” or any other cynically conjured-up ideal. The peace and security of the world’s people depends on the compliance of states with the clearly articulated standards of international law and the UN Charter. Both were deliberately violated by the invasion of Iraq. Crushing the insurgency will not absolve that illicit action; it will only increase the magnitude of the crime.

Therefore we look for an American defeat in Iraq. Such a defeat would serve as a powerful deterrent to future unprovoked conflicts and would deliver a serious blow to the belief that aggression is a viable expression of foreign policy.

© Copyright 2005 by AxisofLogic.com

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: [email]fergiewhitney@msn.com[/email]

xmetalhead

2005-05-04 20:56 | User Profile

Chilling commentary. I wouldn't doubt the resolve of the Iraqi freedom fighters for one second. They are, after all, sacrificing themselves in order to drive out hostile foreign invaders and install proper Iraqi rulers to govern. There's so much chaos in Iraq that it seems that the illegal US occupation cannot sustain itself in Iraq much longer. The insurgents are wearing out the occupiers' will to fight, slowly but surely, and America's evacuation in disgrace is imminent.

You can't mess with God's Will.

TexasAnarch

2005-05-04 23:26 | User Profile

The Contention (metaphysical)

Thanks Walter. Someone had to. It’s come to that. How heavy our hearts, to even have to see those words.

I am going to try to speak a collective grammar here, not using “we” manipulatively, but to propose a common point of view beyond all differences.  It goes to the philosophical problem of The One and the Many, which has cropped up elsewhere on the board recently.  Applied first to personal transformation, it now applies to “America”.

Nobody could wish a fellow American dead, as such. That is a certain kind of tautology. It is in the unity of the ideal behind the Idea that makes it impossible. It contradicts the spirit of inclusiveness of life on which the constitution was signed. It is the form of ultimate existential perversion as a member of a group – one defining its rights as a member over against the death of others. That would be the essence of a self hating (X = Jew, Russian, German, Catholic, Protestant, White Southron, Texan, American…)

“As such” means “as Americans.” The situation Americans face now, however, is one in which our name has been usurped and used against us. They have hijacked the sign-use. They have wrought massive destruction and shed rivers of blood using that name.

This has two immediate consequences for future communications:  First, it puts us Americans under the gun of their, not our enemies.  Second, it reverses the valency of  punishment desert.  It is not those who are called, and call themselves “Americans”, in the sense in which John Bolton, for instance, is called “aggressively pro-American”  who are the “good guys”.  Ronald Reagan’s “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” quip comes home to roost through this reversal.  The Wolfowitzers, bringing themselves to agree to Reaganize foreign policy, reversed the roles of freedom fighters and terrorists in Iraq.

Now they want to slink back home, bit by bit, consolidating the profits gleaned from stealing our name, making war on the basis of known misrepresentations, expecting to be honored, coddled, and sustained.

I have the following to offer as wisdom from the Divine Pymander (Bk. 1. v. 9). It goes to the (existential side of the) problem of The One and The Many, which has arisen on the OD University board under another head.

“The Contention is of One against Two.
            Whilst it flies away, they try to grasp and retain it.”

My translation: “We” represent the One, the common spirit of those who know from deepest understanding the point and place of unity at which all who love and horror America, in understanding and knowledge join. We must contend; this is a gnostic metaphysic of transformation, starting from spirit embedded in matter. This is older than, but not incompatible with Christianity. I view Christian “Gnostics” as a garbled residue of “Hermetic” knowledge. The Copts are important, also. “Christ” would be the ancient doctrine of Spirit-embodied-in- matter-striving-for-return incarnated --in a Jewish descendant from the line of Jesse; which is their blessing fulfilled.

As “We” who have the One in us contend, we are torn apart by those who absolutize differences among the Twos (=psychological opposites, in Jung’s sense; dyads which are the conjunction of .incompatibles, like hermaphrodites, as they were quaintly referred to in those days). The next line of the Pymander goes”

“But the victory of both is not like, for one hasteneth to the Good but the other is neighbor of the things that are evil.”

What we’ve got before us as a metaphysical mess, today, if these thoughts hold water, is: The One (=true American Idea/ideal, as a unity), contending against the Two (those who divide-to-conquer), within the Two (defined opposites in “issues”), finds the linguistic/existential situation of value-reversal described above. I think this agrees with what Nietzsche was looking at around 1900, but may be quite off, since I never read him

RowdyRoddyPiper

2005-05-05 03:24 | User Profile

I opposed the invasion of Iraq. However, now that it has happened I feel constrained by loyalty to hope for a victory for Western troops.

Iraq was a strategic blunder. It wasn't in the interests of any Western nation. However I don't believe it was morally wrong. I don't see anything morally untoward about invading a nation to get rid of a genocidal dictator. It's not the West's obligation or responsibility to do so, but that's different to saying it would be morally wrong.

Ponce

2005-05-05 03:58 | User Profile

The oil of Iraq will never be won till you are able to win the heart of the people, with the US there it will never happen.

Do you see the Peoples Republic of China going around stealing oil? NO they go around making deals that are a benefit to both of them China and the host country..

The war in Iraq is not about oil but about the dominance of the state of Israel in the Midle East with oil taking a second place.

If the Republic of North Korea decides to go to war against the US the US WILL LOOSE.....the North Korean have the body and mind to fight an unlimited guerrila warfare against the US troops and the only way that the US could (again "could") win would be by using nuclear devices, nuclear devices that North Korea also have.

And forget about China and Russia, if we were to go to war against them or if they were to declare war against the US it would be the end of the US as we know it, can you spell KABOOMMMMMMMMMMMM?.

By the way, what I wrote are not my words but those of an X US general but worded in a different manner, I took out the pretty flowers and the bull.

But you know what? I am more afraid of the Zionist state of Israel and THEIR nuclear devices, you should too because they are holding them over the head of your loves ones.

Walter Yannis

2005-05-05 06:35 | User Profile

[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]I opposed the invasion of Iraq. However, now that it has happened I feel constrained by loyalty to hope for a victory for Western troops.

Iraq was a strategic blunder. It wasn't in the interests of any Western nation. However I don't believe it was morally wrong. I don't see anything morally untoward about invading a nation to get rid of a genocidal dictator. It's not the West's obligation or responsibility to do so, but that's different to saying it would be morally wrong.[/QUOTE]

The war was illegal. In the Just War doctrine, legality is a big part of morality. The presumption is always strongly against war and for peace. Following legal procedures is one of the main checks on human emotions ensuring that this weighty burden in favor of peace and against war is fully observed.

Shrub and the Jewish Neokhans lied through their teeth to the American people, and indeed to the whole world, about WMD and about nonexistent Al Queda connections to Saddam, all in order to rouse the sheeple into bleating their support for a war to make the world safe for Israel. Our feckless Congress played along like the nice little shabos goys they mostly are.

I think it's helpful to distinguish between American soldiers and Imperial troopers. If these guys were acting like AMERICAN soldiers, say by patrolling the Mexican border and protecting us from the very real invasion that is now underway, then I'd be fanatically devoted to them as indeed I am to our Minutemen. But as it is, these guys are acting like a bunch of Hessian soldiers in the pay of King George - they are on the other side of the world fighting an illegal (and therefore immoral) war on foreign soil in the interests of a foreign state.

My heart goes out to them personally - Heaven knows I could have been in their position. I served in the Persian Gulf way back when. But that doesn't mean that their illegal and foolish presence there should cause me to cheer on their victory.

This war is ilegal and therefore IMMORAL and it follows that the Iraqi resistance are freedom fighters. The fact that they are fighting under the banner of Islam is as inconsequential as the fact that the Vietnamese patriots fought under the banner of Marxism. Big whoop. The fact remains that they are fighting to expel a foreign invader, which makes them much more like George Washington than the contemptible Hebrew neokhans who infest his city today.

The success of our struggle for the independence of a white, Christian and English-speaking America is closely bound up with the success of those fighting our common Imperial enemy now to establish a brown, Islamic and Arabic-Speaking Iraq. If they win, the neokhans will be discredited and reviled. The sheeple might even start asking why it is they're almost all Yids. Anti-Semitism will grow. It's all good, dawg.

Your signature says it all. Bad is indeed the new good.

I say on to Iran. Let's egg the Empire on to overextend itself. Let's bring back the draft. Let's let the neokhans bankrupt the treasury. We might just get a Joseph Tainter-style collapse.

And in the ensuing chaos we might just live to see David Horowitz necklaced.

Just the thought of that makes me glad I voted for Shrub last November.

Stigmata

2005-05-05 06:48 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] If they win, the neokhans will be discredited and reviled. The sheeple might even start asking why it is they're almost all Yids. Anti-Semitism will grow. [/QUOTE]Highly unlikely. It might give Hils the WH in 2008 though, maybe with Rabbi Lerner as VP.

Stuka

2005-05-05 13:02 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] And in the ensuing chaos we might just live to see David Horowitz necklaced.

[/QUOTE]The prospect of Israeli traitors like Horowitz getting their just desserts warms my heart. But I hope it doesn't end with him. There's a whole class of white elites--in government, in the media, in the corporations, in the universities--that will need to be replaced.

I have little sympathy for "American" soldiers in Iraq. After all, the concept of "American" has almost no meaning. I am concerned about the fate of white Euro-American troops, particularly those in the special forces, who have prostituted themselves for the Empire. We need these guys here at home. But the rest--the afs, mozzies, mestizos, gooks...well, they can be incinerated along with the rest of the Middle East (incl. Israel) for all I care. :angry:

xmetalhead

2005-05-05 13:10 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Stigmata]Highly unlikely. It might give Hils the WH in 2008 though, maybe with Rabbi Lerner as VP.[/QUOTE]

Who cares? With America's degrading slide towards Collapse, President Hillary Clinton would be a proper ending to the American experiment.

I'm with Walter, worse is better. Let this Evil Empire collapse and let the Republic be re-born.

Rowdy Roddy Piper: Where did you hear about Saddam's "genocidal" practices being absolute truth? On who's word were the allegations about Saddam's systemic genocide made? What solid evidence has been provided about the "genocide" besides heresay? Who controls the media and do those who control the media have hatred towards Arab nations? Have you heard that Slobodan Milosevic's "genocide" in Serbia was grossly exaggerated, as it came out in the Hague trial?

RowdyRoddyPiper

2005-05-05 14:25 | User Profile

[QUOTE=xmetalhead]Rowdy Roddy Piper: Where did you hear about Saddam's "genocidal" practices being absolute truth?[/QUOTE] Well, I haven't been to Iraq to observe the evidence for myself, so I can't claim to be 100% certain. However there is plenty of evidence from "hostile witnesses" (i.e. groups that opposed the Iraq war) that make the claims plausible.

The alleged crimes occurred during the 80s when Saddam was a client of the United States. Allegations of war crimes by a US client state were politically damaging to the US at the time, and came from mostly US sources critical of US policy, so it seems unlikely they were invented by US propagandists.

[QUOTE=xmetalhead]On who's word were the allegations about Saddam's systemic genocide made? What solid evidence has been provided about the "genocide" besides heresay?[/QUOTE] When I say "genocide", I am talking specifically about:

1. The mass murder of Kurds during the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s, including use of poison gas.
2. Saddam's "Arabisation" programs where he paid Shi'ite and Sunni Arabs to move to Kurdish regions in order to displace the local population in order to hasten the eradication of them as a separate people.

Evidence includes mass graves, eye witness accounts, captured Iraqi documents, medical problems amongst the Kurdish population as a result of exposure to poison gas, soil tests for chemical residues etc etc. You've seen the film footage of the aftermath of the gassing of Halabja, right? Do you think it was all just faked?

[url]http://hrw.org/doc/?t=mideast_pub&c=iraq[/url]

If you check out the site, it's pretty critical of current US policy in Iraq. It can't be readily dismissed as pro-war propaganda.

[QUOTE]Iraq’s 1988 Anfal campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living within its borders resulted in the death of at least 50,000 and as many as 100,000 people, many of them women and children. This book, co-published with Yale University Press, investigates the Anfal campaign and concludes that this campaign constituted genocide against the Kurds. The book is the result of research by a team of Human Rights Watch investigators who analyzed eighteen tons of captured Iraqi government documents (10 of these documents are reproduced in the appendix) and carried out field interviews with more than 350 witnesses, most of them survivors of the Anfal campaign. It confirms that the campaign was characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass summary executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants; the widespread use of chemical weapons, among them mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands; the arbitrary jailing and warehousing of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months, in conditions of extreme deprivation and without judicial order; the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers to barren resettlement camps after the demolition of their homes; and the wholesale destruction of some two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations. The book is a searing indictment of the Iraqi government’s carefully planned and executed program to destroy a people, harrowing in its detailed and objective recounting of crimes against innocents.[/QUOTE]

This site has a photo of a Kurdish woman with severe chemical burns:

[url]http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/kurdish/htdocs/his/Khaledtext.html[/url]

The use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi government has been confirmed by soil samples etc taken from the site of the attacks:

[url]http://www.phrusa.org/research/chemical_weapons/chemiraqgas2.html[/url]

[QUOTE=xmetalhead]Who controls the media and do those who control the media have hatred towards Arab nations?[/QUOTE] So?

Are the Kurds in league with them? Is there any reason I should deny their suffering out of spite towards the liars in the Western media? Also, as mentioned above the claims are backed up by other sources, so the use of Saddam's crimes against the Kurds as pro-war propaganda would seem to be more a case of opportunistic exploitation of the suffering of the Kurds (which the US didn't seem to care about at the time when it was supporting Saddam) rather than lies made up out of whole cloth.

[QUOTE=xmetalhead]Have you heard that Slobodan Milosevic's "genocide" in Serbia was grossly exaggerated, as it came out in the Hague trial?[/QUOTE] Yes I have. However the argument that "the media lied about Serbian war crimes, therefore they probably lied about Ba'athist war crimes" is hardly watertight and doesn't magically discount all the other evidence.

xmetalhead

2005-05-05 14:45 | User Profile

Yea, right, Rowdy. So the Iraqi Kurds conspire against Saddam's government during a bloody war with Iranian Shiite Islamicists and everyone's surprised and shocked that Saddam dealt with them harshly. Years later, and taken out of context, the fate of the Kurds is called a "genocide" and Saddam's a unique sort of "evil" dictator. Ridiculous. The Zionist media shows the same ****ing tired footage of dead Kurds on the ground while the voice over says "Saddam did this" and everyone accepts it. Nevermind the Iranians and Turks have also dealt harshly with their Kurdish populations and might have tossed a gas canister or two into Iraq to put down the Kurds there. That angle is never really fully investigated, especially when the US needs to bribe Turkey to be compliant; no bad press for Turks whatsoever. Whenever the media blames everything on one guy, especially in the Middle East, I have a problem with that.

The Kurds in Iraq today are virtually a seperate state and allied with Israel and the United States. Large parts of the pre-war lies about Saddam were supplied and paid for by Neokhans which featured exile Iraqi Kurds, Shiites and Communists who were probably subversives in Iraq 35 years ago and still have an ax to grind with Saddam.

Anyway, I don't want argue with you. Believe what you want, I'll believe the truth when I hear it.

Quantrill

2005-05-05 14:45 | User Profile

[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper] When I say "genocide", I am talking specifically about:

1. The mass murder of Kurds during the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s, including use of poison gas. I am certainly no defender of Saddam Hussein, but it should be pointed out that we (the US) sold him those chemical weapons with the full knowledge of the purposes for which they would be used -- to kill Kurds and Iranians. [quote=RowdyRoddyPiper]
2. Saddam's "Arabisation" programs where he paid Shi'ite and Sunni Arabs to move to Kurdish regions in order to displace the local population in order to hasten the eradication of them as a separate people.[/QUOTE] Indeed, just like all those Yanks moving to Atlanta and Jews moving to Florida. Bye bye, Southern identity, hello Citizen of the World.

RowdyRoddyPiper

2005-05-05 14:59 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Quantrill]I am certainly no defender of Saddam Hussein, but it should be pointed out that we (the US) sold him those chemical weapons with the full knowledge of the purposes for which they would be used -- to kill Kurds and Iranians.[/QUOTE]

The poison-gas attacks on Halabja were carried out using French-made Mirage fighter jets dropping chemical munitions manufactured in Iraq by a German-built factory constructed according to an American design.

xmetalhead: I accept what you are saying, but I don't think that what was done to the Kurds is ever justified, no matter what the provocation. I didn't support the invasion of Iraq, as I have said, but not all the propaganda for it is black, some of it is white.

grep14w

2005-05-06 09:14 | User Profile

Good Lord, this was the last forum I expected the Halabja fairy tale to be repeated so uncritically.

Here's a brief history lesson:

[url]http://www.wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=2497[/url]

Exactly a year ago, as I saw the Bush administration pick up the pace for war on Iraq, I sensed President Bush was being pulled along by the Pentagon civilians with their insistence that he was a truly evil man because he had committed genocide. At the end of the Iran/Iraq war in 1988, it was said the Iraqi air force dropped poison gas on its own citizens in the Kurdish town of Halabja and killed at least 5,000 in the course of recapturing the town from the Iranians. That was in March of ‘88. In the days after Iran sued for peace in August, it was reported the Iraqi army had systematically rounded up another 100,000 Kurds – and on the grounds they had fought with the Iranians – slaughtered them with poison gas. Secretary of State George P. Shultz reported this latter assertion without checking and the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution condemning Saddam, relying upon a report from Kurdistan by a staff member of its Foreign Relations Committee, Peter Galbraith, son of the famous economist, John Kenneth Galbraith. The story faded but resurfaced when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. In the years since, it has been amplified again and again by the Washington organization, Human Rights Watch. Its resident expert, Joost Hiltermann, an Arabic-speaking law professor at Johns Hopkins School for International Studies, was chiefly responsible for this amplification.

In 1997, I had come upon a 1991 report of the Army War College at Carlyle, Pa., that had come to completely different conclusions. Its author, Dr. Stephen Pelletiere, had headed a team that pulled together all the specialists of the US intelligence agencies to study the Iran/Iraq war, to study how Iraq had defeated a country three times its size. The report touched on the Halabja deaths, saying that “hundreds” of civilians had died, with indications they were killed by a cyanide gas known to be used by the Iranian army, not possessed by Iraq. It said nothing about the “disappearance” of 10,000 Iraqi Kurds. Pelletiere had been the CIA’s senior analyst in covering the eight-year Iran/Iraq war. When I tracked him down a year ago, living in retirement near the War College, he insisted nothing had happened in the dozen years since to change his mind. There was no genocide, he told me, and said the story about the 100,000 deaths was a hoax, a non-event, propagated by Human Rights Watch. He said he had discussed his differences with Joost Hilterman, arguing the “victims” had never been found, nor had any mass graves been located.

I called Hiltermann at HRW for a discussion of his differences with Pelletiere, which led to an exchange of e-mails over a period of weeks. Here is the last contact I had with him, a long e-mail from me asking questions, and his lengthy response. I’ve merged the two letters so they can be read seamlessly. There are of course no follow-up questions in this exchange, but I think the exchange speaks for itself, and why I could easily conclude that Human Rights Watch had made an enormous blunder in propagating the genocide story and now will say anything to insist it was right all along. Unfortunately, President Bush has not yet been advised by his team that the U.S. intelligence agencies had the story correctly in the first place, as it suits the interest of the warhawks at the Pentagon to have the President believe Saddam is not just a dictator, but a Hitler.

[url]http://www.wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=2497[/url]

As a footnote, the CIA last October issued a report on Iraq’s use of gas during its war with Iran. It said its last use of gas was at Halabja, that “hundreds” had died, and that Iraq had used mustard gas, not cyanide gas. It dismissed the report of the disappearance of 100,000 Kurds later in the year. As for the assertion by Hiltermann that the Iraqi air force had delivered the gas on Halabja, I was advised in an e-mail by W. Patrick Lang, who was the chief intelligence officer at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency in those years, that there was no evidence of air attacks, that both Iraq and Iran had used gas at Halabja and had delivered them by artillery.

[url]http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/04/1602606_comment.php[/url]

What Happened at Halabja?

The only verified Kurdish civilian deaths from chemical weapons occurred in the Iraqi village of Halabja, near the Iran border, where at least several hundred people died from gas poisoning in mid-March, 1988. We know that Iran overran the village and its small garrison of Iraqi troops; what is contested is who was responsible for the deaths--Iran or Iraq--and how large the death toll was.

The best evidence is a 1990 report by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.[2] It concluded that Iran, not Iraq, was the culprit in Halabja. Lead author Stephen Pelletiere, who was the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq throughout the Iran-Iraq war, has described his group's findings:

"The great majority of the victims seen by reporters and other observers who attended the scene were blue in their extremities. That means that they were killed by a blood agent, probably either cyanogen chloride or hydrogen cyanide. Iraq never used and lacked any capacity to produce these chemicals. But the Iranians did deploy them. Therefore the Iranians killed the Kurds."[3]

Pelletiere says the number of dead was in the hundreds, not the thousands claimed by Human Rights Watch and the U.S. administration. To this day, the CIA concurs.[4]

While the War College report acknowledges that Iraq used mustard gas during the Halabja hostilities, it notes that mustard gas is an incapacitating, rather than a killing, agent, with a fatality rate of only two percent, so that it could not have killed the hundreds of known dead, much less the thousands of dead claimed by Human Rights Watch.[5]

According to the War College reconstruction of events, Iran struck first, taking control of the town. The Iraqis counterattacked using mustard gas. The Iranians then attacked again, this time using a "blood agent"--cyanogen chloride or hydrogen cyanide--and re-took the town, which Iran then held for several months. Having control of the village and its grisly dead, Iran blamed the gas deaths on the Iraqis, and the allegations of Iraqi genocide took root via a credulous international press and, a little later, cynical promotion of the allegations for political purposes by the U.S. State Department and Senate.[5a]

Pelletiere described his credentials in a recent New York Times op-ed:

"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."[6]

RowdyRoddyPiper

2005-05-06 10:53 | User Profile

[QUOTE=grep14w]Good Lord, this was the last forum I expected the Halabja fairy tale to be repeated so uncritically.[/QUOTE]

Look, just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I am being "uncritical". I've heard the skeptics arguments before, I just don't find them very credible. Incidentally, though Halabja is the focal point of a lot of propaganda, it's not the only (or even the most significant) incident that the charge of genocide hinges on.

Full HRW report on the Anfal campaign:

[url]http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/[/url]

Stigmata

2005-05-06 11:45 | User Profile

[QUOTE=xmetalhead]Who cares? With America's degrading slide towards Collapse, President Hillary Clinton would be a proper ending to the American experiment.

I'm with Walter, worse is better. Let this Evil Empire collapse and let the Republic be re-born.[/QUOTE]Not I. In fact, Hils would be much more entertaining than the moronic sanctimonious chimp in there now.

But...what slide? What collapse? What evidence do you have that the empire's about to end?

This worse is better stuff hasn't quite worked in the past.

Great Depression: 25% unemployment. Brings us FDR & Jew Deal braintrust, later intervention on wrong side of WW2.

Vietnam: 58K dead (including draftees) in humiliating defeat. Brings us Kissinger & intensification of "special relationship" with Israel including near-nuclear war in 1973. Also backdrop to Jew Left, feminism, etc.

Urban riots of 1960's: Negros burn down their own 'hoods. Brings us affirmative action, MBE set-asides.

Worse must be good for someone but I'm not sure it's Whites.

JoseyWales

2005-05-06 13:48 | User Profile

this is where that article lost me:

...The peace and security of the world’s people depends on the compliance of states with the clearly articulated standards of international law and the UN Charter. Both were deliberately violated by the invasion of Iraq.

Any argument based on what the uN aproves/dissaproves of makes anything else moot. I refuse to aknowledge their authority in any way whatsoever.

I did not then or now support the idea of invading iraq, but i will not stoop to supporting any foriegn "insurgency". What a mess. Thats like arguing that if i dont support the palestenians, i therefore support what the israelis are doing.

Im far more concerned with what ideas and opinions my neighbors down the road are beginning to accept or not accept and the effects of big government here at home.

SteamshipTime

2005-05-06 13:53 | User Profile

[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]I opposed the invasion of Iraq. However, now that it has happened I feel constrained by loyalty to hope for a victory for Western troops.

Iraq was a strategic blunder. It wasn't in the interests of any Western nation. However I don't believe it was morally wrong. I don't see anything morally untoward about invading a nation to get rid of a genocidal dictator... [/QUOTE]You shouldn't put much stock in HRW. Most of their crap is from Iraqi exiles whose interest was in deposing Saddam, not in human rights. HRW employees are currently wandering around the Iraqi desert, looking for all those mass graves the exiles told them were all over the place.

As far as overthrowing the Saddam regime, the US military delivered a resounding victory. Of course, this was a country that's been softened up by 12 years of daily bombings and a cruel economic embargo. And Saddam, like most dictators, probably purged any senior officer who showed any strategic sense as a potential rival.

Currently, the US military is acting as a police force, something which all militaries do very badly. They don't know the language, they don't command any respect, so they don't get good intelligence or citizen cooperation. Ergo, they suck in their police work. No surprise there.

They can't act as a military. Fallujah is probably the last operation of that sort that the Iraqis will put up with. The insurgency has decentralized even further, striking mostly against Iraqi military and police and biding their time for the civil war to come. By the way, given the high body counts of these attacks, there is good reason to think the insurgency has infiltrated every level of the Iraqi military and police forces.

The US has already lost the insurgency war because there's no way they can win it. The US military is designed for blitzkrieg strikes into enemy territory, preferably over open terrain.

Troop strength in Iraq is not being beefed up. Troops are already coming home from our Cold War-era bases in Europe and Asia. They are not being deployed to Iraq.

Iraq was a bigger shock to the neo-cons than they will ever let on. When Richard Perle said we could take the place with 50,000 troops and they'd be throwing roses from balconies, he was completely serious. They cannot believe what is happening over there. Paul Wolfowitz who, for all his diabolical Zionism, is actually a smart, even sensitive, person could not keep the shock off his face for the cameras when he went over there.

Behind the scenes, Dick Cheney and the other WASPs are putting the boot to the neo-cons. Perle is a pariah and may yet end up behind bars. So might Feith and others at the OSP. Bolton may not even make it to UN ambassador, a truly useless job. Wolfowitz himself will drop down a black hole, albeit a luxurious one, at the World Bank.

The US troops are staying hunkered down until the pullout begins in earnest in December 2005. Those 14 bases are going forward because they have too: the contracts have been signed and the Bush administration needs to save face. But I'm betting they'll be turned over to the Iraqi military. There is no way to keep these bases staffed and supplied without a steady drumbeat of deaths from IEDs. Think about a supply convoy being hit or a mess hall being blown up every two weeks as we head into the 2006 elections.

Anything's possible, but I think even the cruel, retarded Bush administration has stepped back from the precipice. There will be no Syria. There will be no Iran. The US dollar would not survive an invasion of either country; it is having trouble surviving Iraq. We are going to tiptoe back across the border into Kuwait and Qatar and that will be that.

RowdyRoddyPiper

2005-05-06 14:18 | User Profile

[QUOTE=SteamshipTime]You shouldn't put much stock in HRW. Most of their crap is from Iraqi exiles whose interest was in deposing Saddam, not in human rights. HRW employees are currently wandering around the Iraqi desert, looking for all those mass graves the exiles told them were all over the place. [/QUOTE]

and finding them...

[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4501737.stm[/url]

To be honest with you, the only reason I make a big deal of it is that Saddam's crimes are what give the conflict the moral ambiguity necessary to avoid coming straight out and supporting the insurgency (as long as the insurgency consists of Ba'athist remnants and not Shi'ite Islamists).

Regardless, I'm never going to root for the other side like the author of the article in the first post of this thread.

As for the rest of your post, I think you hit multiple nails on the head.

SteamshipTime

2005-05-06 14:36 | User Profile

[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]To be honest with you, the only reason I make a big deal of it is that Saddam's crimes are what give the conflict the moral ambiguity necessary to avoid coming straight out and supporting the insurgency (as long as the insurgency consists of Ba'athist remnants and not Shi'ite Islamists).[/QUOTE] Your points are well taken, but there's really no moral ambiguity about it, if you believe in the traditional rule of law. The fundamental principle of international law is national sovereignty. Criminal matters are solely the purview of individual nations. Individuals are not reached under international law. They enjoy the protection of the nations of which they are citizens. This is a crucial bulwark of individual liberty.

Quantrill

2005-05-06 16:58 | User Profile

[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]The poison-gas attacks on Halabja were carried out using French-made Mirage fighter jets dropping chemical munitions manufactured in Iraq by a German-built factory constructed according to an American design.[/QUOTE] The US may not have sold him the weapons used specifically in the Halabja attack, although a US company did provide the design for the weapons factory in which they were built, as you mentioned. However, the US Department of Commerce licensed the export of biological materials, including pathogenic agents, as well as plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities and chemical-warhead filling equipment to Iraq until December 1989, 20 months after the Halabja attack. The US was totally complicit in everything Hussein did during the 80s.

Ponce

2005-05-06 18:02 | User Profile

As you guys know I came from Cuba where we have a "dictator", if you were to read some of my old postings at this site you might find the following.

A dictator when taking power goes by three phases or stages.

1) kill anything and anyone (even by "accident")

2) round up and kill those against you.

3) pick up and jail those who talks against you

The US in Iraq have been on stage one for far longer than the former dictator of that country and it looks to me that this will be a permanent occurance till the US gets out of there.

It also has gone far longer in Palestine as the "Jews" continue to kill and steals the land of the Palestinians.

When you invade a foreign land you must have the heart of the people if you want to succeed, the only thing that Americans are gettin in Iraq from the people are bullets.

By the way, in Colombia there are 1,200 US troops and over 600 (contractors) mercenaries.

MadScienceType

2005-05-06 18:21 | User Profile

[quote=Stigmata]Worse must be good for someone but I'm not sure it's Whites.

Wow! A Stigmata post that makes a point!

[quote=Steamship Time]By the way, given the high body counts of these attacks, there is good reason to think the insurgency has infiltrated every level of the Iraqi military and police forces.

Definitely. I wouldn't be surprised if the minutes of the Parliament meetings over there weren't known by the insurgents before the press. What's your take on the "dramatic" capture of the supposed Al Qaeda #3 man the other day? I would think an organization as (supposedly!) sophisticated as Al Qaeda would factor such events into its C3 structure. Perhaps they're more amatuerish than we're led to believe? Certainly, their inability to carry out a significant attack on U.S. soil for 3 & 1/2 years speaks more, I think, to their impotence than the competence of the FBI. Pakistan is strange as well. Musharraf must be on a tightrope governing a fundie muzzie country, but still cooperating in the War on Terror. Probably has to cooperate enough to be useful to the U.S. and therefore remain alive, but not so much that he's overthrown by popular demand/revolt. I'll bet they worked over Ali Baba #3 pretty well before turning him over to Uncle Sammy, certainly.

The US troops are staying hunkered down until the pullout begins in earnest in December 2005.

I've noticed that also. Seems we're witnessing a very quiet reintroduction of the "Vietnamization" strategy of yesteryear, though I don't think it's likely to be any more successful in its "Iraqization" format.

Anything's possible, but I think even the cruel, retarded Bush administration has stepped back from the precipice. There will be no Syria. There will be no Iran. The US dollar would not survive an invasion of either country; it is having trouble surviving Iraq. We are going to tiptoe back across the border into Kuwait and Qatar and that will be that.

Could be and I hope you're right, especially about the worms like Feith ending up behind bars, but throw another 9/11 into the mix, and it gets interesting real quick. Don't count out the desperation of the Israelis. They're badly losing the demographic battle and their beloved nuclear trump card is about to be matched by the Iranians. At this point, with the American public's taste for imperial adventure waning rapidly, they're also losing the ability to have their U.S. bullyboy protect them as effectively. Certainly, the Iraq fiasco has shown the U.S. to be a paper tiger, at least in terms of holding on to an occupied country (though your point about the striking power of U.S. forces is not to be taken lightly). It's possible they see themselves as having nothing left to lose and so may think a false-flag of 9/11 proportions might be just the ticket to boost flagging goy resolve in the war for Eretz Yisroel. Just how many vans full of "art students" and "movers" are out there unaccounted for, anyway?

edward gibbon

2005-05-06 18:22 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Ponce]When you invade a foreign land you must have the heart of the people if you want to succeed, the only thing that Americans are gettin in Iraq from the people are bullets.[/QUOTE]Edward Gibbon noted that within four years the Mongols in Iraq and Iran did such damage that those countries required 400 years to recover. If oil does become the overriding concern of the American public, we are capable of doing the same as the Asiatic barbarians. This country has little idea how brutal certain tribes have been. We are capable of repeating that atrocity. We are no different.