*Ø* "Hussein probably didn't gas Kurds": CIA senior analyst

"The chemical attack on Halabja – just one of 40 targeted at Iraq's own people – provided a glimpse of the crimes Saddam Hussein is willing to commit, and the kind of threat he now presents to the entire world."
President GW Bush, March 15, 2003
Source: American Forces Information Services


We invaded Iraq because of WMDs and because Saddam Hussein was such a crazy mutha that he gassed his own people (the Kurds in Halabja), so he might gas us, do you remember?

Author Dr Stephen C Pelletiere, recently professor at the US Army War College, was the CIA’s senior political analyst during the Iran-Iraq War. In Tuesday's Late Night Live interview with the doyen of Australian broadcasters, Phillip Adams, Pelletier drops the bombshell that he and his colleagues who investigated the gassing did not believe that Saddam Hussein committed the atrocity.

Of the massacre of Kurds in Halabja, Pelletier tells Adams: “Halabja was a battle between the Iraqis and the Iranians and the Kurds were … collateral damage”. “Halabja was a tragedy of war, it was not a war crime”. Pelletier goes on to say that Iraq was not known to have cyanide gas, but Iran was:

“I examined the case very deeply afterwards … those of us who examined the bodies concluded that most of the Kurds who died, or the ones we examined, died of cyanide poisoning” … “it is spin doctoring” … “people who die in a battle are unfortunate victims, but they are not objects of genocide”.

Pelletier says that “the President is effectively lying to us” … “It does appear that the Bush administration lives in an atmosphere that is hermetically sealed … you do get the opinion that these people are out of touch”.

Hear the interview with Pelletier
Listen in Real Media or Windows Media. Kindly note that the interview starts about 15 minutes from the beginning of the one-hour program, and I suggest you make a cup of tea during the first quarter hour, which is rather inconsequential Aussie political banter.

Pelletiere wrote on January 31, 2003 in the NY Times:

"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."
Source

Could ex-CIA man Pelletiere be Saddam's witness?
Pelletiere has been making his claim since going public on January 31, 2003 in The New York Times in an article ('A War Crime or an Act of War?'). Saddam Hussein at the opening of his trial in Baghdad said that he knew of the Halabja massacre only from the newspapers; perhaps he will call the former CIA man as a witness (more at July 4 in the Blogmanac).

Books by Stephen Pelletiere in Cafe Diem!, our store
America's Oil Wars
The Iran Iraq War: Chaos in a Vacuum
Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Gulf