Sunday 17 January 2010

Others Guilty With Chemical Ali

Saddam Hussein's cousin, the man nick-named 'Chemical Ali', has been handed another death penalty (the 3rd) after being convicted of ordering the infamous 1988 gas attack in the Kurdish village of Halabja that killed an estimated 5,000 people.
He is never going to get much compassion from anyone but the question hanging heavily in the air is the question of Americas guilt in supplying the weapons in the atrocity.
While Ronald Reagan and his administration must accept a major role in events, chief perpetrators are Saddam who ordered the attack and Ali Hassan al-Majeed who carried it out.
Other major players are those who supplied the chemicals, the know how and the means of delivery to Saddam and America are not the major contributor in this category.
The major chemical exporters to Saddam's Iraq were Singapore (4,515 tons), the Netherlands (4,261 tons), Egypt (2,400 tons), India (2,343 tons), West Germany (1,027 tons), Luxembourg (650 tons) and Brazil (100 tons).
The major exporters of the equipment to make the chemicals came from Germany (163), France (85), Austria (54) and Spain (14) while the shells and rockets to carry the chemicals were mostly Italian (75,000 shells/rockets) Spain (57,500 shells/rockets), China (45,000 shells/rockets) and Egypt (28,500 shells/rockets).
While the gassing of Kurds in Halabja featured heavily in the Bush and Blair Iraq pre-War build-up of vilifying Saddam, the U.S. State Department previously took the official position that Iran was responsible and not Iraq who they were backing.
The Defense Intelligence Ageny (DIA) study at the time reported that it was Iran that was responsible for the attack, an assessment (page 100) which was used subsequently by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for much of the early 1990s until Saddam's sent his troops into Kuwait.
The CIA claimed that: 'Blood agents were allegedly responsible for the most infamous use of chemicals in the war—the killing of Kurds at Halabjah. Since the Iraqis have no history of using these two agents-and the Iranians do-we conclude that the Iranians perpetrated this attack'.
While America was sending billions of dollars in loan guarantees and other credits to Iraq, the British Government saw it as an opportunity to replenish Saddam's arsenal. One of the revelations to come out of the Scott inquiry into the arms-to-Iraq affair was the British government's secret decision to supply Saddam with even more weapons-related equipment after he shelled Halabja.
It took seven weeks of haggling until the UN Security Council censured the Halabja attack. Even then, its choice of neutral language (condemning the 'continued use of chemical weapons in the conflict between Iran and Iraq,' and calling on "both sides to refrain from the future use of chemical weapons") was hardly the stinging rebuke expected.

As i said initially, the ultimate blame falls on Saddam and Ali Hassan al-Majeed but there are many other countries that deserve to hang their heads over the incident. Many supplied him, some lied about it, most turned a blind eye but almost all were seemingly relaxed about it at the time.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nah. Leave the politics alone and keep doing the funny stuff.

Anonymous said...

Lucy,

Why must RR take responsibility?

q

Cheezy said...

Lucy might have her own answer to that, but if memory serves, it was Reagan's government that took Iraq off the official list of terrorist nations during the 80s, enabling Saddam and his mates to more easily tool themselves up with the naughty stuff again.

This seems to have been a nakedly political move, rather than one that reflected the likelihood of Saddam to 'play nice'. Iran has always been more of a regional threat and, after 1980, they became a pretty intransigent one - hence Iraq's relative popularity in the west during the Iran/Iraq war.

Falling on a bruise said...

Q - Reagan decided to back Saddam in the war against Iran despite knowing that he was raining down chemical weapons on Iran. As Cheezy said, he removed Iraq from the list of terrorist states to make America an even greater benefactor to Iraq and then tried to pin the blame for Halabja on Iran.

Anonymous said...

david,

i hope you defeat the cancer.

q

Anonymous said...

lucy,

blaming rr is somewhat lame. assuming your right about rr, which i'm not conceeding, saddam was going to get the ingredients anyway, since the soviets, chinese, north koreans, and french didn't abide by embargos then and don't now...

q

Cheezy said...

"assuming your right about rr, which i'm not conceeding"

It (i.e. Iraq's removal from the list) happened in 1982, and was followed by other kinds of help in their war vs Iran.

The fact of US military assistance to Iraq is now a matter of public record - only the depth & breadth of it remains controversial - as it was mainly a covert program.

Even Fox reported it in a fairly uncontested way :)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60702,00.html

Falling on a bruise said...

I would like to blame George W Bush or that Burlosconi fella Q but alas it was Ronnie R who did it. I'm afraid it is him who gets the blame.

David G. said...

Q, your kind wishes are accepted with gratitude!

Anonymous said...

Cheezy,

Thanks for the link. Here are the points from the short report that I think are key:

1. “The Reagan administration secretly gave Iraq vital tactical help despite knowing that Iraqi troops would use chemical warfare in its war against Iran”
2. Broadly, “Washington gave Iraq intelligence assistance in the form of satellite reconnaissance.” Specifically, Washington gave “...Baghdad detailed information on Iranian strengths and troop deployments, tactical planning, airstrike plans and damage assessment”
3. “A spokesman for Powell called the latest allegations that the U.S. knowingly let Iraq use chemical weapons dead wrong".

My observations:
1. The key word in sentence 1 is “help” – the help turns out to be information – not materials, chemicals, or equipment.
2. The problem with sentence 1 is that it is not a quote, it is a NY TIMES opinion that they did not verify or substantiate.
3. The quote in sentence 3 refutes sentence 1, and NY TIMES does not offer a rebuttal...

My conclusions:
1. It is possible that RR knew Iraq had and would use chemical weapons
2. However, it is not certain that RR knew they had the weapons
3. Plus, it is not certain that RR knew they would use the chemicals
4. Finally, there is no indication that RR provided the weapons
5. So, RR is not proven responsible

If I’m on the jury, he walks away a free man...

Q

Anonymous said...

David,

I'm sending positive healing thoughts your way for you and yours!

We still have way too many insults to exchange and conflicts to air!!!

q

David G. said...

I know, q, I raise the conflicts and shortcomings in the U.S. and you provide the insults!!!

Take care.

Cheezy said...

Q- Maybe we have a different opinion on what the word "responsible" and "responsibility" mean in this context?

You seem to think that Reagan (hypothetically) not knowing for certain that battlefield intelligence, sattelite imagery and Bell and Hughes helicopters that were supplied to Iraq, which enabled them to target and deploy chemical weaponry against both Kurds in his own country and Iranian troops, absolves him of any responsibility for them doing just that.

Whereas I tend to think that a supplier should accept some of this responsibility/blame/whatever you want to call it.

There's a certain parallel with the situation in the the most recent conflict in Iraq. Again, if we take the kindest possible interpretation, let's say that the Bush/Blair axis honestly thought that there were WMDs in Iraq. They're still responsible for being wrong.

By the same token, I'd contend that Reagan bears some moral responsibility for cosying up to a despotic regime and providing material assistance for them to kill thousands of people with chemical weapons.

And I suspect Reagan himself would have known this, at the end of the day.

The neocons and their supporters often liked to compare Saddam with Hitler. Well, how would you feel if you helped to arm Hitler during the 30s eh?

Somewhat 'responsible'? I would have.

After the gassing of Halabja, I recall that the US Senate tried to do the right thing. They tried to pass sanctions which would have denied Saddam access to any more US technology - the White House killed the bill, while trying to maintain that Iran had gassed the Kurds.

(This isn't an anti-Reagan thing though. He may have normalised relations with the regime, but it continued apace under Bush Snr and Clinton).