THE U.S. VS. SADDAM HUSSEIN
ON November 22, 1998, "60 Minutes" featured an Iraqi who claimed to be a former spokesman for Udai, Saddam Hussein's son, and to have been imprisoned more than 20 times and tortured for making "mistakes" during his service.
"He is who he says he is," claimed "60 Minutes," because "enough people we talked to assured us he was a member of the Palace inner circle." If that's supposed to be verification, journalism has sunk to a new low. On the word of unidentified "people," we are to believe that this man has firsthand knowledge of Saddam Hussein's family-that he has personally seen how greedy, wicked, and "sick" they are; how they pocket the profits from smuggling oil, cigarettes, and whiskey; how they gloat over dodging sanctions that have plagued everyone but them; how Saddam keeps building palaces while his people starve.
Is it coincidental that this man has been "questioned" by the CIA and British Intelligence? Are they the ones who have set him up somewhere in Europe where he is writing a book? Is it coincidental that he serves the purposes of the U.S. and Britain (and Western oil) in portraying Saddam and his family as ruthless monsters who need to be removed? Why does this man appear on our television screens at the precise moment when U.S. forces and firepower are positioned to attack Iraq once again?
If Americans want to keep the current U.S.-Iraq conflict-and government pronouncements-in perspective, they would do well to read Ramsey Clark's book The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf. During the heavy U.S. "Desert Storm" bombardment in February 1991, Ramsey Clark and John Alpert, award-winning documentary filmmaker, journeyed into Iraq "to witness and document what the U.S. bombing was doing to civilian life." In 1992, Clark's book reported the results of that trip, providing meticulous research and documentation that remains timely and relevant.
The book presents the historical context of the Gulf War (including U.S. long-term planning for it), the horrific air and ground war with its terrible toll of human life and environmental damage, the role of the media in keeping Americans ignorant but proud of their country's deadly technology, the trashing of the U.N. Charter and the U.S. Constitution, and the findings of the International War Crimes Tribunal.
Iraqi troops crossed the Kuwaiti border in 1990 in a context of history and provocation. Iraq, under its many names, had been a coastal nation for thousands of years until the British created Kuwait by cutting away coastal land and oil. In 1958, Abdel Karim Kassem, leading a popular revolution, overthrew the British-installed Iraqi monarchy and began to nationalize Western holdings. In 1961, when Britain granted Kuwait independence, Iraq insisted that Kuwait was "an integral part of Iraq's territory." In 1963, that view was silenced when a CIA-aided coup overthrew Kassem.
In 1968 the Baathist Party came to power. In 1972, Iraq's oil industry was nationalized, and Iraq tried to resolve disputes with Kuwait over land and resources, renewing these efforts after the Iran-Iraq war. Kuwait demanded repayment of the billions loaned to Iraq during the war, even though Iraq had defended Kuwait from threatened Iranian attacks. Kuwait was also draining oil from the two nations' common pools, moving its border checkpoints into Iraqi territory, and increasing oil production quotas, which devastated Iraq's economy.
In May 1990, Saddam Hussein called Kuwait's actions "a kind of war against Iraq." In July 1990, the Iraqi foreign minister called them "tantamount to military aggression." One month later, April Glaspie, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, assured Saddam Hussein that "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait."
"Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."
Saddam took this official U.S. position as a green light, invading and occupying Kuwait four days later.
As the book makes clear, the purpose of the Gulf War was not to "free" Kuwait. Kuwait had never been free, allowing citizenship to only 750,000 of its 2 million population, banning political parties, and in rare "elections" extending the vote only to Kuwaiti men whose forebears lived in Kuwait before 1920. Searches of homes, arrests without warrants, summary deportations, torture, imprisonment, and executions without trials were routine.
Why war against Iraq? The U.S. had maintained a naval and military presence in the Persian Gulf since 1949, and planned its assault on Iraq for years. The world's largest oil companies prefer oil wells in the Middle East because they are more productive and profitable, but Iraq wasn't playing ball. It heretically planned to use oil resources for its own needs-housing, transportation, education, medical care, industry.
Iraq was a politically independent military power, committed to its own economic development. It had electrified the entire country and provided basically free medical care, universal free education through college, low-interest government loans, land to Iraqis who promised to produce within five years, and encouragement to women to work outside the home. But this development did not serve Western interests.
Before the Gulf War, the West ignored the merits of Iraq's claims to sovereignty, to its stolen coastal land, and to its own resources, then flouted them after the war by awarding to Kuwait chunks of the long-disputed Rumailla oil field and part of Iraq's Port Umm Qasr. The U.S. has since expanded its presence in the Gulf by making or strengthening agreements for bases in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait, Pakistan, and Oman. The five permanent members of the Security Council-the United States, Russia, England, France, and China-account for 90 percent of the arms business in the Middle East, with the United States selling two-thirds of the total.
Because U.N. "support" for Resolution 678 in the Gulf War against Iraq was a fraud, obtained by "bribery, black mail, and coercion," we might well wonder about the legitimacy of current U.N. "support." Ethiopia, Zaire, Colombia, and the Soviet Union received generous aid in return for supporting the Resolution. China was awarded $114 million dollars in deferred aid just for abstaining from voting. Syria was allowed to expand occupation of Lebanon. Jordan and Egypt were threatened with economic reprisals if they didn't vote for the Resolution. Egypt was manipulated to get the Arab League to condemn the Iraqi invasion.
The bombing of Iraq averaged 2,000 sorties a day-1 every 30 seconds-including the bombing of 1,500 civilians in the Al Amariuah bomb shelter in Baghdad. Hundreds of missiles and bombs were almost simultaneously directed against the civilian population. Within an hour, 85% of all electric power generation throughout Iraq was destroyed and within 48 hours, the major arteries of the nation's vital services were cut. Bombs and missiles hit civilian hospitals, community health centers, municipal water and sewage facilities, major highways and other roads, civilian cars, trucks, buses, and taxis. Iraq's agriculture and food-processing and distribution system were destroyed.
The ground war continued the slaughter. Three days later, Iraq announced its withdrawal from Kuwait, and Iraqi forces began retreating along the Basra Road. But U. S. planes bombed both ends of the road, then attacked the long rows of cars along a 7-mile stretch, killing thousands of retreating soldiers and fleeing civilians. Two days later, on February 28, 1991, Iraq and the U.S. agreed to a cease-fire, but two days after the cease-fire, the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division slaughtered thousands more Iraqi soldiers when they began walking toward the U.S. position unarmed, with their arms raised in an attempt to surrender. Surviving Iraqi troops were burned by FAEs or buried by bulldozers in more than 70 miles of trenches being defended by 8,000 Iraqi soldiers.
Economic sanctions-the eight-year "punishment" for invading Kuwait-still prevent Iraq from restoring vital services, providing basic needs, mounting an effective national recovery program, or feeding its people. The bombing created poor sanitation, no communication, lack of food and medicine, lack of transportation, and contaminated drinking water, leading to epidemics of cholera, typhoid, dysentery, diarrhea, marasmus/kwashiokor. Thousands of civilians have died from polluted water; infants by the tens of thousands from lack of milk formula and medication; the chronically ill, the sick, and the injured from lack of medical care, medicine, clean water, and sanitation; children, the weak, and the elderly from disease and malnutrition.
Heavy demands for reparations allow the U.S. to maintain a stranglehold on Iraq, keeping it poor, unstable, dying, and dependent on Western countries. Washington demands that Iraq pay for damage to Kuwait caused largely by the U.S. military. Kuwait seeks $60 billion in reparations, nearly $30,000 per capita for its prewar population. Saudi Arabia wants compensation for Gulf cleanup costs. The United States wants payment for the Kurdish relief efforts. Total reparations are estimated at $70-100 billion.
The Gulf War clearly established that we cannot trust our government to tell us the truth. The sooner we face it, the sooner we can begin to deconstruct what is told to us today.
We were told that Iraq had nuclear capability, but International Atomic Energy Agency experts concluded that the Iraqi program was at least three years away from making one crude atomic weapon.
We were told that the U.S. bombed with surgical accuracy, but nearly 93 percent of the bombs were "dumb bombs," free-falling from high altitudes.
We were told that Iraqi soldiers took babies from incubators in Kuwait and left them to die on the cold floor. The "incubator story" was told to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus by 15-year-old "Nayirah," who said she was a volunteer at the hospital. Bush repeated the teenager's story in numerous speeches, claiming 312 babies had died in this way. But "Mr. Issah Ibrahim," the testifying "surgeon," was really Ibraheem Behbehanni-an orthodontist! "Nayirah" turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. Amnesty International at first accepted the story but later discredited it.
We were told that six Iraqi helicopters had defected and flown into Saudi Arabia, but they were actually CIA-coordinated, Soviet-built craft, painted with Iraqi markings, piloted by Americans dressed as Iraqis, flying missions into Iraq to plant smart-bomb homing devices, among other things.
We were told that Saddam Hussein caused the oil slick and the fires in the Gulf, but the day before, U.S. aircraft had hit two oil tankers there and had also hit. Kuwaiti oil facilities on the shores of the Gulf. President Bush knew that allied bombing was causing many of the fires. In March 1992, Australian oil consultant O.J. Vialls, who maintained contact with U.S. firep;fighting teams in the Gulf, wrote that "in a minimum of 66 known cases in Kuwait" allied strikes blew the wellheads off oil wells." Life magazine reported that firefighters found unexploded ordinance from allied bombing "everywhere" while trying to put out the Kuwaiti oil fires.
We were told how pitiful was the plight of the Kurds, but we were not told that the U.S. encouraged the Kurds' postwar rebellion for its own purposes, even appealing directly to the Kurds on radio station Voice of Free Iraq, funded and operated by the CIA, and broadcast into Iraq in Kurdish. After the war, the broadcasts said in Kurdish and Arabic, "Rise! . . . . This time, the allies will not let you down!" The result was death, hunger, and despair for thousands, and displacement for hundreds of thousands. Bush did not want Kurdish uprisings in Iraq to succeed lest they incite the more than 10 million Kurds oppressed by the Turkish government-a staunch U.S. ally hosting 16 U.S. bases and our third largest military aid recipient. The U.S. has supported Turkey in its long-standing repression of Kurdish people while prodding Iraq's large Shiite population in the south into rebellion, with disastrous loss of Shiite life and property.
In August 1992, the U.S., Britain, and France-to "protect the Shiites," whom the U. S. bombed mercilessly during the war-proclaimed they would shoot down any Iraqi aircraft flying south of the 32nd parallel. This invasion of Iraq's sovereignty has extended hostilities indefinitely, and when Saddam doesn't play ball in the no-fly zone in his own country, the U.S. has an excuse for even more mischief in retaliation.
The U.S. won't be satisfied until Saddam is removed. To that end, he is portrayed as a one-dimensional, international monster while the people of Iraq pay the price in death, disease, and hunger. Without any other perspective, we will never know the real history and circumstances of Iraq. We will remain at the mercy of distorted news releases, disconnected from Iraq's past and Western politics.
Winter Contents 1998 -- NCX -- Archives -- Electrons to the Editor