In His Own Words - Bush On Saddam's WMD

That source has been countered. There was more than ONE incident Arch.


regards
seekerof

Originally posted by Seekerof
That source has been countered. There was more than ONE incident Arch.

There were never any bodies for the other supposed incident. It was based on claims made by defectors. As usual they say whatever they are told to say by authorites where they defect to.

And even if any of it were true it happened a long time ago. It is no reason for an invasion today.

[Edited on 1-2-2004 by ArchAngel]

Another thing, YES many other did lie to the Americans in support of going to war because of WMD's, however many of those people were lied to.

could another reason, be they didn't want to seem unpatriotic?

could it have been for personal or political gain?

Those who lied, had many reasons to do so, but the fact is we know they lied.

Ask the Kurds and #es (sp)....perhaps you can convey that to them?
Again, more than one incident and links have been previously provided in the other threads dealing with this issue.


regards
seekerof

Originally posted by Seekerof
Ask the Kurds and #es (sp)....perhaps you can convey that to them?

Again, more than one incident and links have been previously provided in the other threads dealing with this issue.

I have seen many of the links you refer to. Nothing but words from people with motive to lie.


[Edited on 3-2-2004 by Seekerof]

Originally posted by ArchAngel
If you don't care for the source there are plenty others. I have been in plenty of debates about this issue, and the results were not what you claim they were here. To me it is clear that the gassing happened as a consequece of a battle, and was done by the Iranians.

I too have done much research on this. Both Iran and Iraq used chemical warfare against each other. While Iran was indeed responsible for many deaths, Iraq also played a part. They were fighting each other, not killing Kurds.

Stephen C. Pelletiere, Douglas V. Johnson II, and Leif R. Rosenberger, of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.


Excerpt, Chapter 5

U.S. SECURITY AND IRAQI POWER

Introduction. Throughout the war the United States practiced a fairly benign policy toward Iraq. Although initially disapproving of the invasion, Washington came slowly over to the side of Baghdad. Both wanted to restore the status quo ante to the Gulf and to reestablish the relative harmony that prevailed there before Khomeini began threatening the regional balance of power. Khomenini�s revolutionary appeal was anathema to both Baghdad and Washington; hence they wanted to get rid of him.

United by a common interest, Iraq and the United States restored diplomatic relations in 1984, and the United States began to actively assist Iraq in ending the fighting. It mounted Operation Staunch, an attempt to stem the flow of arms to Iran. It also increased its purchases of Iraqi oil while cutting back on Iranian oil purchases, and it urged its allies to do likewise. All this had the effect of repairing relations between the two countries, which had been at a very low ebb.

In September 1988, however -- a month after the war had ended -- the State Department abruptly, and in what many viewed as a sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemicals against its Kurdish population. The incident cannot be understood without some background of Iraq�s relations with the Kurds. It is beyond the scope of this study to go deeply into this matter; suffice it to say that throughout the war Iraq effectively faced two enemies -- Iran and the elements of its own Kurdish minority. Significant numbers of the Kurds had launched a revolt against Baghdad and in the process teamed up with Tehran. As soon as the war with Iran ended, Iraq announced its determination to crush the Kurdish insurrection. It sent Republican Guards to the Kurdish area, and in the course of this operation -- according to the U.S. State Department -- gas was used, with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred. Nonetheless, Secretary of State Schultz stood by U.S. accusations, and the U.S. Congress, acting on its own, sought to impose economic sanctions on Baghdad as a violator of the Kurds� human rights.

Having looked at all of the evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to confirm the State Department�s claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with there were never any victims produced. International relief organizations who examined the Kurds -- in Turkey where they had gone for asylum -- failed to discover any. Nor were there ever any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

We would have expected, in a matter as serious as this, that the Congress would have exercised some care. However, passage of the sanctions measure through the Congress was unusually swift -- at least in the Senate where a unanimous vote was secured within 24 hours. Further, the proposed sanctions were quite draconian (and will be discussed in detail below). Fortunately for the future of Iraqi-U.S. ties, the sanctions measure failed to pass on a bureaucratic technicality (it was attached as a rider to a bill that died before adjournment).

It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, the Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraqi-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing a great many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.

Thus, in our view, the Congress acted more on the basis of emotionalism than factual information, and without sufficient thought for the adverse diplomatic effects of its action. As a result of the outcome of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq is now the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf, an area in which we have vital interests. To maintain an uninterrupted flow of oil from the Gulf to the West, we need to develop good working relations with all of the Gulf states, and particularly with Iraq, the strongest.

Here is a different point of view, claiming that evidence of the chemicals has been found. Not too sure if it is completely factual as it hasn't been verified by more well known sources..

"For the first time ever, scientists have been able to prove the use of chemical weapons through the analysis of environmental residues taken years after such an attack occurred. In a development that could have far-reaching consequences for the enforcement of the chemical weapons treaty, soil samples taken from bomb craters near a Kurdish village in northern Iraq by a team of forensic scientists have been found to contain trace evidence of nerve gas.

The samples were collected on June 10, 1992 by a forensic team assembled by the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the New York-based Middle East Watch (MEW), a division of Human Rights Watch (HRW). The samples were forwarded to the Chemical & Biological Defence Establishment (CBDE) of Great Britain's Ministry of Defence at Porton Down which analyzed them.

Eyewitnesses have said that Iraqi warplanes dropped three clusters each of four bombs on the village of Birjinni on August 25, 1988. Observers recall seeing a plume of black, then yellowish smoke, followed by a not-unpleasant odor similar to fertilizer, and also a smell like rotten garlic. Shortly afterwards, villagers began to have trouble breathing, their eyes watered, their skin blistered, and many vomited--some of whom died. All of these symptoms are consistent with a poison gas attack."

www.phrusa.org...

Originally posted by Seekerof
Again, more than one incident and links have been previously provided in the other threads dealing with this issue.

After searching for links in posts from the last year for "gas Kurds" I have found nothing that points to any evidence of the other gas attack occuring.

All is speculation based on interviews with the state department after defection.

Just like the supposed Biological scientist who said he built the WMD trailers that turned out to be balloon fillers.

Maybe you have a link to something that was not posted, or I missed the one where it was.

Excerpt from the "Reigle Report"
U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs



3. The United States provided the Government of Iraq with "dual use" licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological, and missile- system programs, including(6) chemical warfare agent precursors; chemical warfare agent production facility plans and technical drawings (provided as pesticide production facility plans); chemical warhead filling equipment; biological warfare related materials; missile fabrication equipment; and, missile-system guidance equipment.

4. The United States military planned for the use of chemical and biological weapons
by Iraq by: discussing the chemical/biological threat in pre-war threat assessments; designating chemical/biological production facilities priority bombing targets; assigning a very high priority to SCUD missile units; and, conferring with the U.S. national laboratories about the hazards associated with the bombings of the chemical, biological, nuclear weapons facilities.

5. The United States military made preparations for the expected use of chemical /biological weapons by Iraq, including: acquiring German-made FOX NBC detection surveillance vehicles shortly before the war; deploying as part of standard operating procedure, automatic chemical agent alarms, chemical agent detection equipment, chemical decontamination equipment, and chemical agent protection suits, gloves, boots, and masks; administering anthrax vaccines, an experimental botulinum toxin vaccine, and pyridostigmine bromide as a nerve agent pretreatment pill; and, preparing and using personnel medical questionnaires asking soldiers departing the theater about their health and whether or not they believed they were exposed to chemical or germ warfare.



[Edited on 1-2-2004 by Shoktek]

[Edited on 1-2-2004 by Shoktek]

Let's not forget where all these weapons came from...

Excerpt from the "Reigle Report"
Staff report to U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

Maybe we should bomb the evil regime that gave Saddam the WMD....oh wait....that would be us.....

Yep. We gave him tons of weapons to use on Iran, because we didn't like them. Then, after he uses them, we make it out as if he's a monster? Hmmmm...not sure who's more of a monster, really.

According to a Senate Committee Report of 1994 [1]: From 1985, if not earlier, through 1989, a veritable witch's brew of biological materials were exported to Iraq by private American suppliers pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Amongst these materials, which often produce slow, agonizing deaths, were: Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax. Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin. Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord and heart. Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs. Clotsridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness. Clostridium tetani, highly toxigenic. Also, Escherichia Coli (E.Coli); genetic materials; human and bacterial DNA. Dozens of other pathogenic biological agents were shipped to Iraq during the 1980s.

The Senate Report pointed out: "These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction." [2] "It was later learned," the committee revealed, "that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program."[3]

These exports continued to at least November 28, 1989 despite the fact that Iraq had been reported to be engaging in chemical warfare and possibly biological warfare against Iranians, Kurds, and Shiites since the early 80s.

www.ccmep.org...

36 hours of repair after WMD attack on ATS - Bump.

Keeping on track, both Bush and Blair have today authorized full enquiries into their intelligence failures.

If the Bush admin significantly abused their intelligence services, they will go, no doubt about it. The gravity of what they have done is far more severe than what prompted Nixon to resign over the Watergate tapes.

Wouldn't it be convenient to find a scapegoat in the UK, even a dead one, to take some kind of fall. But it's unlikely, given the enormous "failings" of intelligence from within the US's own (read fabrication, fraud and lies by Bush and his cronies) and the certainty of location of readily deployable WMDs that was reported to the world by Rumsfeld and Powell as justification for an illegal unilateral invasion.

And there will still be people posting nonsense after red herring after nonsense in defense of the Bush admin performance.

Originally posted by ArchAngel

Originally posted by Seekerof
Ask the Kurds and #es (sp)....perhaps you can convey that to them?

Again, more than one incident and links have been previously provided in the other threads dealing with this issue.

I have seen many of the links you refer to. Nothing but words from people with motive to lie.


[Edited on 3-2-2004 by Seekerof]

You have seen nothing but what you wished to view and see Arch...thats the problem!

Your problem, as with a few others, is that your focus of search and research is too narrow or perhaps better said or observed as being OFF TARGET and only relegated to "your" own definitions and 'uses' of 'search'.....hence your limited search of: "gas Kurds"....LOL! 2 threads on ATS from that search when anyone else really seeking knowledge or information would have used a variety of word usages!

"Motive to lie" is not motive to blind hate and ignorance and thus, the lack of looking for information that might contradict your own line of thinking and reasoning. Personally, to say that "Saddam never used chemical weapons on Iraqis" is a 'lie' and in such, you are a 'liar' for promoting such infactual nonsense? Looking that way or another case of "Bush lied" based on the intelligence he and his administration used inmaking the decision to vamp Iraq...you know...the same intellignece that the UN used, Germany, France, UK, Spain, Russia....ETC!

Try this thread which contains the words: "Anfal campaign", posted by Leveller.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Try a search engine also and just type: Anfal Campaign.


"And there will still be people posting nonsense after red herring after nonsense in defense of the Bush admin performance."

Observatory skills? Oratory? "Sideline" or cheers and yells from the speculative audiences are nice but some would prefer that those who do, provide to the contrary.


regards
seekerof

[Edited on 3-2-2004 by Seekerof]

Okay read this everyone:

"States like these (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) ... constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." - President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, Jan. 29, 2002

NOTICE THE WORD 'THREATEN.'

Originally posted by ArchAngel
How can anyone say that the reason for Invading Iraq was anything other than Weapons Of Mass Destruction?

WTF are you talking about,

Reasons were world domination (Project American Century..) and oil.

There is no WMD.

Somebody has to be on top, what is wrong with that?

As long as it isn't some commie empire I have no problem.

Originally posted by Seekerof
You have seen nothing but what you wished to view and see Arch...thats the problem!

I think some other people could have a problem with this as well...

Originally posted by THENEO
Somebody has to be on top, what is wrong with that?

As long as it isn't some commie empire I have no problem.

Oh yes, God save us from those commie empires!

Really though...there is a difference between being on top, and being on top whilst pushing other countries around...look at Russia's nuclear test-run...they are not going to be pushed around. Many many countries and people are pissed off and feel threatened.