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The Saker Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Lockdown Skeptics
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Robert Fisk on Saddam, the US and Chemical Weapons national |
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news report
 Tuesday December 17, 2002 11:27 by Shane
 from counterpunch.org Why Bush Remains Silent Did Saddam Test Poison Gas on 5,000? by ROBERT FISK The Independent December 16, 2002 Why Bush Remains Silent Why didn't Tony Blair and George Bush mention Saddam Hussein's most terrible war crime? Why, in all their "dossiers", did they not refer to the 5,000 young men and women who were held at detention centres when their families - of Iranian origin - were hurled over the border to Iran just before President Saddam invaded Iran in 1980? Could it be because these 5,000 young men and women were used for experiments in gas and biological warfare agents whose ingredients were originally supplied by the United States? Just months before his September 1980 invasion of Iran - in which tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers died an appalling death by gas burns and blisters - Saddam's Interior Ministry issued directive No 2884, dated 10 April 1980, stating that "all youths aged between 18 and 28 are exempt from deportation and must be held at detention centres until further notice". Most, though not all, of the young men and women affected by this order were Kurds. None of their families ever saw their loved ones again, but they have since been told that the detainees were killed during experiments in gas and chemical warfare centres in Iraq. Among the most terrible war crimes committed during the Second World War were the Japanese experiments with chemicals and gas on prisoners at Harbin, in occupied China. US officials ensured that the principal culprits got away in return for the results of their experiments. The Nazis ran medical tests on Jews in extermination camps in Europe, some of whose "doctors" also escaped punishment. As always in Iraq - and elsewhere in the world - there is no proof. Kurdish families to whom The Independent has spoken pleaded with us not to reveal their names, in the pathetic hope that their sons and husbands and daughters might still be alive. They include the father of a young man who was taken from his family home in Baghdad, and the father of a man who was allegedly sent to the front line during the Iran-Iraq war and who died as a "martyr" months after his death during a medical experiment. With the encouragement of President Bush Snr, the US Department of Agriculture sent Iraq samples of chemicals that could be used to protect crops and other agricultural produce, with pesticides that were later developed for chemical warfare, despite repeated warnings from American officials that the cultures could be of use against human beings. Just before the September 1980 invasion of Iran, the detentions began. At least 5,000 "Kurdish youths", according to one Iraqi refugee interviewed by The Independent, "vanished into thin air". According to one Iraqi dissident, whose refusal to ally himself to the Iraqi opposition is much to his credit in the picture that is emerging, a large if unknown number of young detainees may have perished as a result of being used as guinea pigs for Saddam Hussein's research programmes at various chemical, biological and nuclear warfare laboratories. According to the same source, Iraqi scientists who have since defected to the West have given hints of the biological warfare testing programme but have refused, for obvious reasons, to incriminate themselves. Iraqi-Iranian Kurdish families who have received appalling information about the fate of their relatives have refused to keep quiet. One father of five missing boys gained an audience with an Iraqi vice-president who allegedly told him that one of his sons had been imprisoned for opposing President Saddam but had then had an "awakened conscience". The boy had decided to fight in the war against Iran and had died in combat, his body being "lost". According to an Iraqi Kurdish refugee in Lebanon who regards the official Washington- supported Iraqi opposition as fifth columnists, Western intelligence has long known the fate of the 5,000 or more "detainees". "It is now clear," he says, "that during the war with Iran many of the young detainees were taken to secret laboratories in different locations in Iraq and were exposed to intense doses of chemical and biological substances in a myriad of conditions and situations. With every military setback at the front causing panic in Baghdad, these experiments had to be speeded up - which meant more detainees were needed to be sent to the laboratories, which had to test VX nerve gas, mustard gas, sarin, tabun, aflatoxin, gas gangrene and anthrax." In the early stages of the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian troops stormed across the Baghdad-Basra highway and almost cut Iraq in half - to the great concern of Washington. But not one of the many accusations levelled against Saddam Hussein's regime by London and Washington mentions the missing 5,000 young people "detained" by Iraq just before the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war. This could, of course, reflect the West's embarrassment at its support for Iraq during that war. Or it could be an attempt to avoid any inquiry into how President Saddam obtained the means to wage chemical warfare against his opponents.
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Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4Its an interesting article alright.
So I'm sure that if you took the time to write a summary, people would follow a link to see the rest.
And years later when it became known that Saddam gassed thousands of
Kurdish men, woman and children (around 1988/89), as far as I remember
there was a UN resolution tabled to condemn the attack. Every other
country naturally condemned the attack, except the USA.
A reasonable explanation for US behaviour is clearly they want to reserve
for themselves the 'right' to use nerve gas weapons in the future and it
would have made it difficult if they had already condemned their use.
You can also be reasonably sure that the very able bodies of the CIA and
NSA have managed to get hold of all the results of any nerve gas testing
done on humans by the Iraqi regime.
Saddam also used nerve gas in another less widely known attack against the
Kurds in the mountains. In this attack a few hundred refugee were trying to
escape (possibly to Turkey) and planes dumped nerve down over the valley
in which they were walking. Everybody and every other living thing (eg. birds)
were killed, except one bloke who managed to get up the hillside to the top
of the ridge. (He was interviewed on Channel 4 news. This happened back in
the late 80s).
For a military point of view -as evidenced by this attack, is that nerve gas
is an 'excellent' agent for going after 'terrorists' in mountaineous regions,
because of the way the gas gets trapped in the valleys, turning what is
normally advantageous terrority giving good cover to a disadvantage. This may
have been the objective of this 'test' and you can be damn sure that the US
military were NOT unaware of it.
Perhaps the Russians have already tried these techniques against the Chechens
If such tactics have not been used widely it may be because it would
obviously release a vicious blow-back, but now that the Orwellian War of Terror
is upon us as a cover for the global corporate-fascist regime currently based
in the USA, such blow-back would almost be welcome to help further their aims and
propanganda.
Nah 'Ray' its better just to read the article here rather than the insane 'anarchist' rantings that usually pass for news on this board.
http://alberta.indymedia.org
Dr. David Swann Reports from Iraq
Calgary peace activist Dr. David Swann is currently in Iraq and is able to periodically publish reports. In chronological order from newest to oldest, his reports [also at Activist.ca]:
[Dec14] Final Report: "Dying for Peace in Iraq: Disaster Preparedness on the Brink of War"
[Dec14] Farewell Iraq
[Dec. 10] Iraq: Interim Report on Medical - Disaster Preparedness
[Dec.05] All of Us Are Iraq
[Dec.05] Just Another Day of War Games
[Dec.05] Life and Death in Iraq (Karima's family)
[Nov.29] Bitterness in Basra
[Nov.29] Why Iraq?
[Nov.22] Notes from Iraq
[Nov.22] Just another day for Baghdad children.
and have a look at this if you´re keen on avoiding a rant...
yemeni times on their missiles;
(the current editorial of the english langauge weekly newspaper).
We kept our rights
Some Yemenis believe that by allowing the North Korean vessel ‘So San’ to unload the 15 Scud missiles to Yemen, the US is only making a maneuver to show the world that it respects international law. Others feel that it is a good gesture towards Yemen because of the latter’s support to the US-led war against so-called international terrorism.
But nevertheless, this act of the US did not help enhance the image of the US in the streets of Yemeni.
“We still believe the US is making itself the bully of the world.” said one of the Yemenis who was watching the news of the US decision to let the vessel go.
see
http://www.yementimes.com/02/iss51/view.htm#1
o as if you will avoid the mad rantings.
hee hee.