The Iraq governing council was presented with an unrepentant Saddam. One member asked him about his involvement in the gassing of the Halabja Kurds.
He pointedly denied it.

nyway, the US has the so called perp in 'Chemical Ali' (Al Majid) in custody despite some reports he was killed in an air raid on his Basra home. One of today's paper lists him as killed but there are many more credible reports (google "Al Majid Captured"). He is the man supposed to have ordered two chemical attacks against the Kurds, hence his nickname Chemical Ali.

At the bottom of this post is a link to a very credible report that states (by a former senior CIA official who knew of the Hlabja incident at the time) that the gas used in the Halabja attack appeared t be the type only held by Iran (a blood agent) vesus the mustard gas held by Iraq & that Iran had mounted an attack through Halabja in the north to try and sieze control if Iraq's largest sources of water. Al Majid (Chemical Ali) was supposedly the commander sent into to block the Iranian attack. (see the added details at bottom).

It is so hard to know who did what because at the time Iraq & Iran were warring & each was being played off against the other. They both used gas against each other but the Iranian role in the Halabja battle never seems to get mentioned anymore.

I tend toward the view that because the Halabja incident occured during the bitterest fighting between Iran & Iraq, and because at different times each was nearly overwhelmed by the other, that they had begun to both use any means at their disposal to both attack and to blunt each other.

The *claim* that Al Majid merely gassed the Kurds solely because he felt nasty to them (kill em all, leave nothing alive) or that it just seemed like good fun, doesn't really wash allowing that Iran and Iraq were at each others throats at that instant, but anything is possible in times of war.

Doug Marker

#2 Some for and against links re who gassed Halabja ... I am particularly interested in the bottom link that either has to be refuted ot has to be accepted. The claimed author does not have the apparant bias that all the others seem to have.

***************************************************************************

SOME OF 'CLAIMS' FOR IRAQ HAVING GASSED HALABJA (also one that states Majid was captured alive)

[link|http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/majeed.htm|http://www.globalsec...d/iraq/majeed.htm]

[link|http://www.usis.it/file2000_03/alia/a0031711.htm|http://www.usis.it/f...alia/a0031711.htm]
>>>> EXTRACT
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
March 16, 2000

STATEMENT BY JAMES P. RUBIN, SPOKESMAN
<<<<

[link|http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn|http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn]
>>>>> EXTRACT >>>>>
Baghdad\ufffds refusal to allow UN experts to inspect the presidential sites on which chemical and biological weapons were allegedly hidden was taken to justify a new bombing campaign on Iraq last month. Times have changed. Ten years ago, the systematic gassing of the Kurdish population of northern Iraq had far less impact on America. Only six months after the slaughter at Halabja, the White House lent Saddam Hussein another billion dollars. And in 1991, at the end of the Gulf war, US troops stood idly by while Saddam\ufffds presidential guard ruthlessly suppressed the popular uprising by the Kurds for which the American president had himself called.
by Kendal Nezan
<<<<<

*******************************************************************

'CASE' AGAINST HALABJA BEING DELIBERATE IRAQ ATTACK AIMED AT KURDS

[link|http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2098.htm|http://www.informati...o/article2098.htm]

>>>> EXTRACT >>>
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.
<<<<<<

#3
Comment from DSM ...

On this issue, it is hard to have it both ways, either the article immediately above can be debunked (the claimed author held a more than authorative position), or it has to be taken as a very accurate & authorative version.

The difficulty with the bulk of the accounts is that most come from sources that have had real 'axes to grind' with Iraq & Hussien & consequently their reports may be less credible unless the real sources for their information can be traced back to someone with the same authority as the CIA & military professor mentioned in the last item.

The Halabja incident may well rank with the Kuwait 'babies thrown from incubators' story.

We are merely the great unwashed trying to make sens of it all .....

Cheers

Doug