President Bush is under pressure from Republican allies to have Saddam Hussein put on trial swiftly, a move they hope might boost support for the Iraq war before the November presidential election.
Republicans are pushing to put Saddam Hussein on trial before November, hoping an evildoer bounce in the polls carries President Bush to reelection, GOP sources said yesterday.
With the election shaping up as a referendum on Iraq, the officials said the televised spectacle of an arrogant Saddam in the dock would offset the Democrats' jibes at the failure to find weapons of mass destruction or prove a 9/11 link. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/story/208409p-179665c.html
That the Republicans are pushing to use Saddam’s trial to boost Bush’s ratings leads me to believe that the fact the United States was in part an accomplice to Saddam’s crimes and in ridding the world of Saddam and his elusive WMD’s the United States used depleted uranium, classified by the UN as a WMD, against the Iraqis will be covered up. This disgusts me, I am not even a Democrat.
The spotlight should be put on Saddam's record of execution and torture but it should also shine elsewhere.
-Am
Overthrown Dictator Faces Three Main Accusations
07.02.2004 Friday
[ANALYSIS]
The former leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, is now in the hands of Iraq's temporary government and seated in the chair of the accused. Hussein, who is to be judged 'by the Iraqi people', will in fact be tried on the following three charges: War crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. The war crimes allege that Iraq invaded first Iran in 1980 and then Kuwait in 1990 with no legal basis.
This crucial threat against international peace and security was that the characteristic of the violence violated the most basic norms that the United Nations (UN) system is based on. It is known that chemical weapons were used during the Iran-Iraq War and that some detainees were killed and some city centers were bombed. All of these actions are prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
Iraq itself bore witness to crimes against humanity in a broader sense, including mass murders, extensive torture, the massacre of people in Halabaja by chemical weapons, etc.
If it is taken into consideration that the trial is to be conducted at the court consisting of specially trained judges, 'crimes against humanity' will be the main axis. Thus, Saddam Hussein and (other powerful men of the regime) will be brought to task for the cruelties they inflicted on the Iraqi people over the years. This situation seems formidable enough for other dictators busy engaging in similar activities.
However, questions abound about whether or not the rules of conduct in this trial are legal. Saddam Hussein right now is a prisoner of war.
Saddam, a statesman captured as a result of invading force that ignored all the international laws and mechanisms set up by the UN system, could argue that the US occupation of Iraq last year was not so different from his occupation of Kuwait.
The Iraq Temporary Government looks like a 'puppet government'. It has no legitimacy in the presence of the Iraqi people. It is a matter of discussion in international law whether or not the decrees of an illegal authority bind the following governments. Finally, one need not even bother predicting that this trial will be fair because it will be held under the close watch of the occupier force and a government whose raison d'etre is opposition to Saddam.
BERDAL ARAL, Assistant Prof., Fatih University International Affairs Department.
Analysis: Iran ignored at Saddam's trial? By Modher Amin Published 7/5/2004 6:48 PM
George Galloway writes: "If there were a genuine accounting for the many crimes committed in Iraq, it would be a trial not seen since Nuremberg. It would involve those who sold Saddam the gas he used at Halabja; those who encouraged him to invade Iran when its revolution threatened to sweep away the corrupt kings and puppet presidents of Arabia propped up and profited from by the west; those, like Donald Rumsfeld, who twice visited Saddam during that war to help him target the terrible weapons the west had sold him; and those whose hands are covered with the blood of all those buried in the biggest of all the mass graves in Iraq - slaughtered by sanctions. We who saw and cried out about this slaughter were traduced as fabricators; and later, when it could no longer be denied, as 'mouthpieces', 'apologists' or even 'paid agents' of Saddam."
Analysis: Iran ignored at Saddam's trial? By Modher Amin Published 7/5/2004 6:48 PM
TEHRAN, Iran, July 5 (UPI) -- Iranians are indignant at the Iraqi court's failure to include the 1980 attack on Iran and the use of chemical weapons on its fighters as the charges read out during Saddam's Hussein's court appearance last Thursday.
Tehran said Sunday it was drawing its own list of charges against the ousted leader for crimes relating to the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, during which close to a million people -- mostly Iranians -- were killed.
"One of the crimes of Saddam Hussein is the attack of Iran, the death of Iranians, and the use of chemical weapons in Halabja (within Iraq) and other places (in Iran) during the war," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, told reporters. "Iran will definitely file a complaint with the Iraqi court."
Preliminary charges against Saddam Hussein cover invasion of Kuwait in 1990, crushing Kurdish and Shiite revolts after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, ethnic cleansing of Kurds in 1987-1988, gassing Kurds in Halabja in 1988, killing religious leaders in 1974 and killing of political activists over three decades.
"We have asked the Iraqis to explain why the attack on Iran did not feature among the charges against him, even though the judge said it would be addressed at a later date," Asefi said.
The trial of the 67-year-old Saddam has provoked anger among other Iranian officials, who described Saddam as a war criminal, having committed atrocities beyond the borders of his country.
The officials also called for the transparency of the trial, with some urging the case to be referred to the Hague, to, apparently, obtain international recognition of the "crimes committed."
Addressing an open session of the new conservative-held parliament on Sunday, Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel denounced the trial as "American."
"The Iraqi attack on Iran was the most important chapter in Saddam's dossier," he said. "The prosecution will have to reveal if they really intend to prosecute him for his crimes or if this will be a show trial."
On Friday, the influential former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said Saddam's trial should be totally public, accusing, at the same time, the United States of imposing censorship.
"Saddam's extraordinary crimes must be exposed but from the first words pronounced by Saddam, the Americans imposed censorship and broadcast only what they wanted," Rafsanjani told worshippers at the weekly prayers in Tehran.
Rafsanjani called on all Iranian authorities to press charges against Saddam for using chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and civilians within the country during the eight-year war between the two nations.
"We faced severe chemical attacks at the beginning of the war when world powers were giving Saddam the green light to do anything to prevent Iran from winning," he said.
Rafsanjani, head of Iran's top political arbitration body -- the Expediency Council -- and still one of the clerical regime's most powerful figures, condemned the absence of the Iran-Iraq war from the main charges leveled against the deposed Iraqi dictator.
"Why is the war against Kuwait, which only lasted several months, among the major charges while the war against Iran, which lasted eight years, is omitted?" he asked, casting doubt on the self-reliance of the Iraqi court.
"If the Iraqi court refuses to include (Saddam's responsibility) in the unleashing of the war against Iran, it means it is on an order from the Americans," Said Rafsanjani, adding that 100,000 Iranians suffered from Iraqi chemical weapons. Iranian officials put the annual cost of treatment alone of the chemically injured victims at $20m.
Once the war ended in 1988, peace negotiations between Iran and Iraq got underway in the U.N. premises in Geneva. Iran's attempts, however, to receive compensation for war damages, which Tehran puts at $1,000 billion, has so far failed.
Tehran says its call for reparations was partially approved by the former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar in 1990, who later on December 9, 1991, declared Iraq as the initiator of the war. But, Saddam's Iraq insisted it was Iran that provoked the war with border shelling and skirmishes, as well as by threatening to export the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution of 1979.
A U.N. fact-finding mission confirmed the use of banned weapons by the Iraqi regime against Iranian troops in a trip they made to Iran in March 1984.
"The specialists unanimously concluded that chemical weapons in the form of aerial bombs had been used in the areas they inspected ... and that the type of chemical agents used were ... mustard gas, and ... a nerve agent known as Tabun," read the 1984 U.N. Yearbook.
It remains uncertain, however, if such agents were developed inside the country or supplied to Iraq by external sources. But Iran believes the U.S. and other Western governments provided Saddam with equipment that helped him use chemical weapons against the Islamic republic.
In its Editorial on Monday, the pro-reform English-language Iran News daily, stresses the prosecution of Saddam for what it calls "unspeakable atrocities against Iran," but, at the same time, criticizes Iranian foreign policy for failing to pursue a strong, effective diplomacy in securing war reparations.
"... Not all fault should lay with the new Iraqi government for this gross oversight of justice (absence of Iran-Iraq war from the charges brought against Saddam Hussein)," it said.
"U.N. Resolution 598 (by which Iran agreed to a cease-fire) expressly stated that Iran was entitled to billions of dollars worth of war damages but our foreign ministry officials were indecisive and not as resolute as needed to secure payment."
The paper compared Iranian situation with that of Kuwait, asking: "Notwithstanding that having U.S. support is a plus, why couldn't we get the kind of deal Kuwait secured?"
After the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the Iraqi regime was ordered to pay $48 billion worth of war reparations. Reports say that Kuwait has already received $18 billion of that money and the U.N. has obtained a guarantee from Iraq's new interim government whereby 5 percent of all Iraqi oil proceeds would be set aside for Kuwait.
"It is high time for Iran's foreign ministry to once again get the ball rolling on Resolution 598," the paper concluded. "In fact, the first step should be a thorough review of the Resolution by our seasoned diplomats and legal experts toward reviving and recovering our long-overdue rights."
Bush and His NeoCons Should Be Tried for War Crimes along with Saddam 24-Apr-04 Iraq War Crimes
George Galloway writes: "If there were a genuine accounting for the many crimes committed in Iraq, it would be a trial not seen since Nuremberg. It would involve those who sold Saddam the gas he used at Halabja; those who encouraged him to invade Iran when its revolution threatened to sweep away the corrupt kings and puppet presidents of Arabia propped up and profited from by the west; those, like Donald Rumsfeld, who twice visited Saddam during that war to help him target the terrible weapons the west had sold him; and those whose hands are covered with the blood of all those buried in the biggest of all the mass graves in Iraq - slaughtered by sanctions. We who saw and cried out about this slaughter were traduced as fabricators; and later, when it could no longer be denied, as 'mouthpieces', 'apologists' or even 'paid agents' of Saddam."
Iraqis Want Saddam's Old U.S. Friends on Trial -- That Means Bush Sr., Baker, Rumsfeld, Shultz, Weinberger... 26-Jan-04 Saddam Hussein "If Iraqis ever see Saddam Hussein on trial, they want his former American allies shackled beside him. 'Saddam should not be the only one who is put on trial. The Americans backed him when he was killing Iraqis so they should be prosecuted,' said Ali Mahdi... 'If the Americans escape justice they will face God's justice. They must be stoned in hell.' The United States continued to feel the backlash of its move to give Saddam prisoner of war status Tuesday as thousands of Iraqi protesters called for his execution. Washington's move has thrown some doubt over his fate after Iraq's U.S.-backed Governing Council had said Saddam would be tried in a special tribunal by Iraqi judges. His POW status means the former dictator, accused of sending thousands of Iraqis to mass graves, could have more rights than a war criminal... The United States backed Saddam in his war with Iran in the 1980s. During that time, he also gassed an estimated 5,000 Kurds to death in the village of Halabja.'"
Sickening Hypocrisy: Powell's Rhetoric at Site of Halabja Massacre 18-Sep-03 Colin Powell From Reuters: "Secretary of State Colin Powell said at the mass grave of Iraqi Kurds killed in a 1988 gas attack that the killings showed the world should have acted sooner against President Saddam Hussein...." Mahablog responds: "Let's not talk about 'the world's' reaction to this tragedy, Mr. Secretary. Let's talk about your reaction. In 1988 then senators Claiborne Pell, Al Gore, and Jesse Helms introduced a bill to impose economic sanctions on Iraq in response to its use of chemical weapons. The Reagan White House blocked that bill. You were part of the Reagan White House, Mr. Secretary. In fact, the United States continued to provide Iraq with money and arms after the gassing of the Kurds at Tuwaitha.... The truth is, 15 years ago the dead of Halabja were an inconvenience.... But when the agenda became an invasion of Iraq, you shamelessly dug up the Halabja corpses and put them on display for your own purposes. Suddenly, you really, really cared about them."
Yes, Reagan-Bush Helped Iraq Get Chemical, Biological Weapons 29-Jun-03 Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction Roger Schlueter writes: "You don't have to dig deep to find that from 1982 to 1990 the United States supplied Iraq with not only conventional arms and cash but also chemical and biological materials, including the precursors for anthrax and botulism... With the Ayatollah Khomeini controlling Iran, the U.S. feared a radical Islamic takeover of the region, so it began cozying up to Saddam -- you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Except that Reagan-Bush also armed Iran through Iran-Contra! "Then, just before Christmas 1983, Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld -- yes, the current secretary of defense -- to Baghdad to discuss resuming official diplomatic relations with Saddam, relations that had been severed during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war... It is thought that U.S.-supplied helicopters were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja, which killed 5,000 Iraqis -- the same attack frequently cited the past few months as a reason to overthrow Saddam."
Operation Iraqi Invasion, By the Numbers 06-Apr-03 Iraq War Costs Jackson Thoreau writes: "This is a variation of a question-and-answer piece on the relationship between Iraq, the U.S., Europe, and military campaigns circulating through cyberspace. I set it up as an easier-to-read numerical column and added a few items of my own. The numbers speak for themselves.
Years that Iraq has had chemical and biological weapons: 20.
Number of U.S. and European corporations that supplied Iraq with materials and knowledge to make chemical and biological weapons since the early 1980s: 150.
Number of Western nations that condemned Saddam Hussein in 1988 immediately after he used gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 to kill an estimated 5,000 people: 0."
Ansar al-Islam Troops Murder 6 Kurds, While US Does Nothing 09-Feb-03 Iraq "The attack happened in the village of Garmashtepe, as veteran Kurdish commander and member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) politburo Shawkat Haji Mushir met three Ansar members. PUK officials said the meeting was supposed to be to negotiate the defection of a number of Ansar members to the PUK. But soon after arriving the visitors opened fire with guns and threw grenades killing Mushir, two PUK security officers and three civilians -- a man, woman and child... Preaching a radical interpretation of Islam and holy war, Ansar's up to 700 fighters control about a dozen villages and a range of peaks pressed between the PUK-controlled Halabja and the jagged ridges of the Iranian border behind them. Kurdish officials say Ansar is directed by around 150 Arabs who fled the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan." The US patrols the skies over this area - so why do we let them murder Kurds?
Former Top CIA Analyst Says Bush is LYING about Saddam 'Gassing His Own People' 02-Feb-03 Bush Lies Stephen C. Pelletiere was the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's. In the NY Times, Pelletiere writes that both Iraq AND Iran used chemical weapons in the March 1988 battle for the Kurdish town of Halabja. The Defense Intelligence 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... Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards."
Blaming Iran for Gassing of Kurds: Newly De-classified Doc Proves Reagan-Bush Pentagon Concocted Lie 22-Jan-03 Iraq Robert Fisk writes for the UK Independent: "Even if Donald Rumsfeld's hearty handshake with Saddam Hussein in 1983 - just after the Great Father Figure had started using gas against his opponents - didn't show how little the present master of the Pentagon cares about human rights or crimes against humanity, along comes Joost Hilterman's analysis of what was really going on in the Pentagon back in the late 1980s. Hilterman, who is preparing a devastating book on the US and Iraq, has dug through piles of declassified US government documents - only to discover that after Saddam gassed 6,800 Kurdish Iraqis at Halabja...the Pentagon set out to defend Saddam by partially blaming Iran for the atrocity. A newly declassified State Department document proves that the idea was dreamed up by the Pentagon - who had all along backed Saddam - and states that US diplomats received instructions to push the line of Iran's culpability, but not to discuss details...because the story was a lie."
Bush Wants to Replace Saddam With the Field Commander Who Led Chemical Attack on the Kurds! 23-Sep-02 Iraq How many times have we heard Bush & Co. declare that Saddam had to be replaced because "he used chemical weapons on his own people" - namely the Kurds. So who would Bush choose to replace Hussein? There has been NO discussion of this crucial question in the US media. But the Sunday Herald of Glasgow, Scotland has unveiled some of the top candidates. The top name is General Nizar Al-Khazraji, "the field commander who LED the 48-hour chemical weapons attack which poisoned and burned 5000 Kurdish civilians in the northern town of Halabja in March 1988. [Read that again, in case you missed the point. And this was when US Companies, under the auspices of Reagan-Bush, were providing chemical agents to Iraq.] He also, alleges one credible eyewitness who testified in video-taped evidence earlier this year, kicked a little Kurdish child to death after his forces entered a village during the height of the Iraqi repression in 1988." Just Say No to Bush's War!
The Scott inquiry revealed the cynicism of politicians' approach
Richard Norton-Taylor Wednesday August 21, 2002 The Guardian
Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons in the past is repeatedly cited by the US and British governments as justification for his removal from power now. But just what was their response to his use of poison gas against Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s? Far from condemning his actions, they stepped up their support for Baghdad. One of the most damning 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 the Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988 with gas bombs, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians and maiming thousands more. Saddam said he had punished the Kurds for "collaboration" after the town had been successfully attacked by Iran. The weapons were produced with German-supplied chemicals.
At the end of the Iraq-Iran war later that year, Sir Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary, drew up a paper entitled The Economic Consequences of the Peace. There were "major opportunities for British industry", he said. But he was terrified his plan to increase British arms exports to Iraq, secretly agreed by the government, would be leaked.
"It could look very cynical if so soon after expressing outrage about the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms sales," one of his officials told the Scott inquiry. The government's decision to change its policy, but keep MPs and the public in the dark, was even more cynical, replied Lord Scott.
As Whitehall turned a blind eye to exports to Baghdad of equipment which ministers and officials admitted could be used to produce chemical and nuclear weapons, Howe ordered his paper to be kept under wraps until, in the words of Ian Blackley, a senior Foreign Office diplomat, the "cloud had passed" - a reference to the attack on Halabja.
This cynicism and hypocrisy was matched only by the US. Soon after the attack, Washington approved the export to Iraq of virus cultures and a $1bn contract to design and build a petrochemical plant the Iraqis planned to use to produce mustard gas. And while the Reagan administration condemned the use of chemical weapons during the eight-year Iraq-Iran war, US officers were secretly supplying Iraqi generals with bomb-damage assessments and detailed information on Iranian troop deployments.
"The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern," Walter Lang, a former senior US defence intelligence officer, told the New York Times this week. Washington was worried about the threat of Iran spreading its Islamic revolution to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Ever since TE Lawrence and his admirers in Whitehall drew the map of the modern Middle East after the first world war, the British and, later, American approach to the region has been dictated by naked self-interest. It is an approach which demanded a totally craven approach towards human rights. Saudi Arabia, no respecter of these and a past funder of Islamist extremism in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere, remains one of Britain's biggest arms markets and a key supplier of oil to the US.
Whatever the reasons, and there are many, for seeing the back of Saddam, don't listen to Bush or Blair when they talk of morality, democracy and good governance. The evidence of Lord Howe and his officials to the Scott inquiry revealed the government's priorities. This might be salutary to remember as the government prepares to respond to pressure for a debate about the Bush administration's plans to invade Iraq.
"Public opposition in this country might have been embarrassingly vociferous, particularly in view of the use by Iraq of chemical weapons," Scott told Howe. Howe replied that he wanted to defend British corporate interests from "malicious commentators" and "emotional misunderstandings". The decision to prevent MPs from knowing about the government's shift in policy was a "perfectly legitimate management of news", he said.
Then, the evidence against Saddam was there for all to see, but conveniently ignored. Britain and the US were desperate to benefit from Saddam's massive arms procurement programme. Now, we are told, Saddam must be overthrown because he is again said to be developing weapons of mass destruction, but we are not given the evidence.
A senior Foreign Office official told the Scott inquiry: "If there had been an outcry [over the change in policy towards Iraq] I am not sure it would necessarily have reflected the view of the country, only of the number of people prepared to comment." Those words may be worth recalling in the weeks ahead.
· Richard Norton-Taylor is the author of Truth is a Difficult Concept: Inside the Scott Inquiry
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