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Gandalf Grey
Guest
The Iraqi Tribunal -the Farce Continues-The Media Plays Along
By Barry Lando
Created Jun 24 2007 - 10:30am
As expected the Iraqi Special Tribunal sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid alias
Chemical Ali to death, along with two other defendants for their role in the
killing of tens of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980's
All the key players in the media were there to capture the dramatic
courtroom scene. What none of the reporters mentioned however was that when
Saddam and Chemical Ali and the rest of Saddam killers were doing their
worst, the U.S. governments of Ronald Reagan and later George Bush Senior
were their de facto allies, providing them with vital satellite
intelligence, weapons and financing, while shielding them from U.N.
investigations or efforts by the U.S. Congress to impose trade sanctions for
their depredations.
I admit to being somewhat obsessed by the subject, but perhaps someone can
explain how it is that none of the accounts of Sunday's session that I've
read mention in any fashion how close were the ties of the U.S. and
Saddam-and how carefully the U.S. and its Iraqi allies have manipulated the
Tribunal from the beginning so that the complicity of the U.S. and other
Western countries with Saddam and his crimes are never discussed.?
Surely it might be worth a side bar or analysis piece from the likes of the
New York Times or the Washington Post or the LA Times or Time or Newsweek or
the Boston Globe or CNN or ABC or CBS. Put things in context for your
audience who might be lead to think that Saddam and Chemical Ali were
operating in an international vacuum. I find it difficult to believe that
none of the many excellent reporters who have covered the Tribunal have
never suggested the subject to their editors. Nor that none of those editors
never requested such a piece from their vast stable of reporters. But I
guess they didn't.
So it remains my obsession.
For what I'm talking about here's an article I did earlier this week for
Truthdig:
By Barry Lando
On June 24th in Baghdad the Special Iraqi Tribunal is due to hand down a
verdict against several of Saddam Hussein's officials charged with the
slaughter of some 180,000 Kurds during the Al Anfal campaign in 1988.
The tribunal was established to prosecute those guilty of crimes against
humanity during Saddam's reign. Much as the Nuremburg Tribunal did with the
Nazis, It was also supposedly meant to educate Iraqis and the world about
Saddam and his barbarous regime and, at the same time, to bring a kind of
closure to that nightmarish epoch. That at least was the fiction. The fact
is that many of those complicit in Saddam's crimes-some of the world's most
prominent leaders and businessmen, past and present-are missing from the
dock. The full story of Saddam's crimes will never be told.
Which is just as planned. From the start, the tribunal was established,
financed and advised by the United States, the same power that once helped
arm Saddam, encouraged him and stymied attempts of others to rein him in.
Even most of the forensic investigations-the excavation of mass graves and
the examination of mountains of documents-were carried out under the
supervision of U.S. investigators. To make the rules of the game perfectly
clear, one of the tribunal's regulations, constantly overlooked by the
media, is that only Iraqi citizens and residents can be charged with crimes
before that court.
It is thus understandable that there has been no mention in the Baghdad
courtroom of foreign complicity with Saddam's crimes, such as the genocide
of the Kurds. What is surprising, though, is how thoroughly the American
media have played along with that charade.
Take the dramatic account by John Burns in The New York Times of an event
this past January when prosecutors presented damning recorded evidence of
Saddam and his officials coldbloodedly discussing the use of chemical
weapons against the Kurds.
One of the voices was identified by prosecutors as that of Saddam's cousin,
Ali Hassan al-Majid, who came to be known as Chemical Ali, scornfully
dismissing concern that foreign powers might react to Saddam's using
chemical weapons against the Kurds.
"I will strike them [the Kurds] with chemical weapons and kill them all," he
was heard saying. "Who is going to say anything? The international
community? A curse on the international community!"
Some reporter might have pointed out that Chemical Ali had good reason for
such assurances: Beginning in 1983-five years before the attacks on the
Kurds-the U.S. had willfully ignored the fact that Iraqis were using
chemical weapons against the Iranians. But more than just ignore the fact,
for years the administration continued to block all attempts by the United
Nations and later the U.S. Congress to condemn Saddam or impose sanctions
against Iraq. Indeed, American satellite intelligence was used by the Iraqis
to target Iranian troops. The U.S. continued to furnish that intelligence in
1988, even after it realized Saddam was also using chemicals against his own
Kurds.
American officials also refused to meet with Kurdish leaders who had
evidence of the atrocities. Saddam, after all, was America's de facto ally
at the time in the war against Khomeini's Iran. And even after the end of
that war, until just weeks prior to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, George H.W.
Bush and James Baker were still intent on wooing the tyrant with trade and
credits. They saw Iraq as a major market for U.S. exports, not to mention as
a prize for American oil companies. Both West and East, of course, had
supplied Saddam with billions of dollars worth of weapons-of all kinds.
Indeed, while the Al Anfal trial was going on in Baghdad, Dutch prosecutors
in The Hague presented a document from Saddam Hussein's secret service
praising a Dutch businessman, Frans van Anraat, for "rendering outstanding
services" by selling Iraq "banned and rare chemicals" during the Iraq-Iran
war. Van Anraat was lauded by the Iraqis for daring to "expose himself to
extremely dangerous consequences" by selling the chemicals; he also did so
"at a reasonable price compared to other offers."
For instance, later this summer the tribunal is due to consider charges
against almost a hundred of Saddam's top officials for the massacre of tens
of thousands of Shiites following the abortive uprising of 1991.
Another possible defendant, George Bush Senior, might have been questioned
in relation to what was probably the worst of Saddam's crimes, the slaughter
of tens of thousands of Shiites following the abortive uprising of 1991. The
tribunal is due to consider those charges later this summer.
The Shiites were answering the repeated calls by the first President Bush
for a popular revolt. Such a call was rebroadcast in Iraq by clandestine CIA
radio stations and printed in millions of leaflets dropped by the U.S. Air
Force across the country. Problem was, the Iraqis didn't realize until it
was too late that Bush and Baker, his pragmatic secretary of state, didn't
really mean it.
When it looked as if the insurgents might actually succeed, the American
president turned his back. The White House and its allies wanted Saddam
replaced not by a popular revolt which they couldn't control but by a
military leader more amenable to U.S. interests.
So, as the United States permitted Saddam's attack helicopters to devastate
the rebels, American troops just a few kilometers away from the slaughter
were ordered to give no aid to those under attack. Instead they destroyed
huge stocks of captured weapons rather than let them fall into rebel hands.
According to some rebels in Iraq, American troops prevented them from
marching on Baghdad.
Maybe I've missed something, but to date I've seen no such background given
in U.S. media reports about the upcoming trial.
But what if, instead of the special tribunal-or along with it-Iraq had
established a "truth commission," such as South Africa did after the defeat
of apartheid? Imagine also the unimaginable: that the Iraqi government had
kept Saddam alive long enough to testify about past relations with the rest
of the world.
How enlightening it would have been to hear the former tyrant recount his
relief when he realized in 1991 that President Bush p
By Barry Lando
Created Jun 24 2007 - 10:30am
As expected the Iraqi Special Tribunal sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid alias
Chemical Ali to death, along with two other defendants for their role in the
killing of tens of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980's
All the key players in the media were there to capture the dramatic
courtroom scene. What none of the reporters mentioned however was that when
Saddam and Chemical Ali and the rest of Saddam killers were doing their
worst, the U.S. governments of Ronald Reagan and later George Bush Senior
were their de facto allies, providing them with vital satellite
intelligence, weapons and financing, while shielding them from U.N.
investigations or efforts by the U.S. Congress to impose trade sanctions for
their depredations.
I admit to being somewhat obsessed by the subject, but perhaps someone can
explain how it is that none of the accounts of Sunday's session that I've
read mention in any fashion how close were the ties of the U.S. and
Saddam-and how carefully the U.S. and its Iraqi allies have manipulated the
Tribunal from the beginning so that the complicity of the U.S. and other
Western countries with Saddam and his crimes are never discussed.?
Surely it might be worth a side bar or analysis piece from the likes of the
New York Times or the Washington Post or the LA Times or Time or Newsweek or
the Boston Globe or CNN or ABC or CBS. Put things in context for your
audience who might be lead to think that Saddam and Chemical Ali were
operating in an international vacuum. I find it difficult to believe that
none of the many excellent reporters who have covered the Tribunal have
never suggested the subject to their editors. Nor that none of those editors
never requested such a piece from their vast stable of reporters. But I
guess they didn't.
So it remains my obsession.
For what I'm talking about here's an article I did earlier this week for
Truthdig:
By Barry Lando
On June 24th in Baghdad the Special Iraqi Tribunal is due to hand down a
verdict against several of Saddam Hussein's officials charged with the
slaughter of some 180,000 Kurds during the Al Anfal campaign in 1988.
The tribunal was established to prosecute those guilty of crimes against
humanity during Saddam's reign. Much as the Nuremburg Tribunal did with the
Nazis, It was also supposedly meant to educate Iraqis and the world about
Saddam and his barbarous regime and, at the same time, to bring a kind of
closure to that nightmarish epoch. That at least was the fiction. The fact
is that many of those complicit in Saddam's crimes-some of the world's most
prominent leaders and businessmen, past and present-are missing from the
dock. The full story of Saddam's crimes will never be told.
Which is just as planned. From the start, the tribunal was established,
financed and advised by the United States, the same power that once helped
arm Saddam, encouraged him and stymied attempts of others to rein him in.
Even most of the forensic investigations-the excavation of mass graves and
the examination of mountains of documents-were carried out under the
supervision of U.S. investigators. To make the rules of the game perfectly
clear, one of the tribunal's regulations, constantly overlooked by the
media, is that only Iraqi citizens and residents can be charged with crimes
before that court.
It is thus understandable that there has been no mention in the Baghdad
courtroom of foreign complicity with Saddam's crimes, such as the genocide
of the Kurds. What is surprising, though, is how thoroughly the American
media have played along with that charade.
Take the dramatic account by John Burns in The New York Times of an event
this past January when prosecutors presented damning recorded evidence of
Saddam and his officials coldbloodedly discussing the use of chemical
weapons against the Kurds.
One of the voices was identified by prosecutors as that of Saddam's cousin,
Ali Hassan al-Majid, who came to be known as Chemical Ali, scornfully
dismissing concern that foreign powers might react to Saddam's using
chemical weapons against the Kurds.
"I will strike them [the Kurds] with chemical weapons and kill them all," he
was heard saying. "Who is going to say anything? The international
community? A curse on the international community!"
Some reporter might have pointed out that Chemical Ali had good reason for
such assurances: Beginning in 1983-five years before the attacks on the
Kurds-the U.S. had willfully ignored the fact that Iraqis were using
chemical weapons against the Iranians. But more than just ignore the fact,
for years the administration continued to block all attempts by the United
Nations and later the U.S. Congress to condemn Saddam or impose sanctions
against Iraq. Indeed, American satellite intelligence was used by the Iraqis
to target Iranian troops. The U.S. continued to furnish that intelligence in
1988, even after it realized Saddam was also using chemicals against his own
Kurds.
American officials also refused to meet with Kurdish leaders who had
evidence of the atrocities. Saddam, after all, was America's de facto ally
at the time in the war against Khomeini's Iran. And even after the end of
that war, until just weeks prior to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, George H.W.
Bush and James Baker were still intent on wooing the tyrant with trade and
credits. They saw Iraq as a major market for U.S. exports, not to mention as
a prize for American oil companies. Both West and East, of course, had
supplied Saddam with billions of dollars worth of weapons-of all kinds.
Indeed, while the Al Anfal trial was going on in Baghdad, Dutch prosecutors
in The Hague presented a document from Saddam Hussein's secret service
praising a Dutch businessman, Frans van Anraat, for "rendering outstanding
services" by selling Iraq "banned and rare chemicals" during the Iraq-Iran
war. Van Anraat was lauded by the Iraqis for daring to "expose himself to
extremely dangerous consequences" by selling the chemicals; he also did so
"at a reasonable price compared to other offers."
For instance, later this summer the tribunal is due to consider charges
against almost a hundred of Saddam's top officials for the massacre of tens
of thousands of Shiites following the abortive uprising of 1991.
Another possible defendant, George Bush Senior, might have been questioned
in relation to what was probably the worst of Saddam's crimes, the slaughter
of tens of thousands of Shiites following the abortive uprising of 1991. The
tribunal is due to consider those charges later this summer.
The Shiites were answering the repeated calls by the first President Bush
for a popular revolt. Such a call was rebroadcast in Iraq by clandestine CIA
radio stations and printed in millions of leaflets dropped by the U.S. Air
Force across the country. Problem was, the Iraqis didn't realize until it
was too late that Bush and Baker, his pragmatic secretary of state, didn't
really mean it.
When it looked as if the insurgents might actually succeed, the American
president turned his back. The White House and its allies wanted Saddam
replaced not by a popular revolt which they couldn't control but by a
military leader more amenable to U.S. interests.
So, as the United States permitted Saddam's attack helicopters to devastate
the rebels, American troops just a few kilometers away from the slaughter
were ordered to give no aid to those under attack. Instead they destroyed
huge stocks of captured weapons rather than let them fall into rebel hands.
According to some rebels in Iraq, American troops prevented them from
marching on Baghdad.
Maybe I've missed something, but to date I've seen no such background given
in U.S. media reports about the upcoming trial.
But what if, instead of the special tribunal-or along with it-Iraq had
established a "truth commission," such as South Africa did after the defeat
of apartheid? Imagine also the unimaginable: that the Iraqi government had
kept Saddam alive long enough to testify about past relations with the rest
of the world.
How enlightening it would have been to hear the former tyrant recount his
relief when he realized in 1991 that President Bush p