ALI HASAN AL-MAJID FINALLY PAYS FOR THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE

"I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them! The international community and those who listen to them."
~ Ali Hasan Al-Majid.

Well, well, well . . . they finally executed that son-of-a-bitch Ali Hasan Al-Majid. I would have preferred that Chemical Ali had been handed over to the women survivors of the Anfal so that they could cut him to pieces rather than allow him the comfort of a hangman's noose but, unfortunately, proper Kurdish justice was once again thwarted.

Here's a little something on the dead bastard:

Chemical Ali is responsible for a lot more suffering than what happened in 1988. Here are some videos about Helebce which show some of the long-term effects of chemical weapons on the civilian population. I believe these videos are from 1998 because they feature Dr. Christine Gosden of the UK, who went to Helebce in 1998 to evaluate the long-term effects of weapons of mass destruction:

Remember that it wasn't only in Helebce that chemical weapons were used. It was the policy of the Saddam regime to use these kinds of weapons against the Kurdish people.

For more on Dr. Gosden's evaluations, see this article of hers from the Washington Post. Check also her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Technology, Terrorism and Government and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

I have posted the following videos before but, now that Al-Majid is dead, it's time to revisit them so that we should never forget. Besides, these videos were a documentary that was never aired in the US. I wonder why?

Now it's time to deliver those non-Iraqis who are responsible for the Anfal to the Kurdish women survivors . . . and let them all be cut to pieces.

HELEBÇE 1988

"Saddam Hussein clearly intended to complicate the task of treating the Halabja victims. At a minimum, he was using Halabja as part of the Iraqi CW test program. Handbooks for doctors in Iraqi military show sophisticated medical knowledge of the effects of CW. The Iraqi military used mustard gas in the "cocktail," for which there is no defense or antidote."
~ Dr. Christine Gosden, US Senate testimony.

We remember.

Today was the first UN commemoration of Helebçe, twenty-one years after the fact.

We don't forget the guilty.



Nor do we forget Turkey's mysterious role in the genocide.

You can run, but you can never hide. We remember everything.

On another note, there's a new Kurdish blog by Rastî commenter, Berfo, at Zerkesorg. His post on Helebçe has a link to an excellent article at Archaeology.org on Saddam's crimes against humanity. Check it out.

KURDISTAN LOSES ANOTHER FRIEND

"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."
~ Walter Winchell.

Sadly, Kurdistan has lost another friend. On 1 January, Senator Claiborne Pell died:

Claiborne deBorda Pell, the quirky Newport blueblood who held the affections of blue-collar Rhode Island and championed better education of the poor during a 36-year Senate career, died shortly after midnight today at his home in Newport. He was 90 years old.

Democrat Pell, who had suffered from Parkinson’s disease since before his retirement from the Senate, died peacefully in the presence of his wife, Nuala O’Donnell Pell, and family members, according to a statement released by the family.

Pell, who served as the U.S. senator from Rhode Island from 191 to 1997, was perhaps best known nationally for the college grant program that bears his name.

He focused heavily on education, the arts and humanities, and foreign affairs during his 36 years in the Senate. During the latter part of his Senate career, he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Although the mainstream media has remembered him solely for his contributions to education through financial aid, I remember Senator Pell for his efforts on behalf of the Kurdish people. It was Senator Pell who sent Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer Peter Galbraith to check out genocide suspicions against the Saddam regime:

In Washington in early September [1988], I laid out my concerns to Senator Pell. He accepted my suggestion that he introduce legislation imposing tough sanctions on Iraq, and he urged me to write something immediately as there was almost no time left on the Senate calendar. In little more than an hour, I drafted a four-page bill that imposed on Iraq every sanction that I could think of. The bill prohibited the import of Iraqi petroleum into the United States, ended U.S. credit guarantees for Iraq, prohibited most U.S. exports to Iraq including all sensitive technologies, prohibited loans or financial assistance, and required the United States to oppose international lending to Iraq. The president could waive the sanctions only if he certified to the Congress in writing that "Iraq is not committing genocide against the Kurdish population of Iraq . . . and Iraq is not using chemical weapons banned by the 1925 Geneva Conventions and has provided reliable assurances that it will not use such weapons." I gave the bill the title "The Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988" in part to help win support but also because that was what it was intended to do.

Making use of an arcane parliamentary procedure explained to me by Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd's floor staff, Senator Pell got the bill on the calendar for an immediate vote. Among the bill's co-sponsors were Byrd, arch-conservative Republican Jesse Helms, and Tennessee Democrat Al Gore. The Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988 unanimously passed the Senate the day after it was written and introduced. I had never seen the Senate act so quickly on such an important issue.

Senator Pell asked me to go to eastern Turkey to collect evidence that might bolster the bill's prospects in the House, and, as importantly, help persuade President Reagan not to veto the bill. I asked Chris Van Hollen, then a junior Foreign Relations Committee staffer working on European issues (and now a Democratic congressman from Maryland), to join me. Robert Finn, a political officer at the American Embassy in Ankara, and Hamza Ulucay, a Turkish Kurd working for the U.S. consulate in Adana, filled out our team.

From the NYTimes, 9 September 1988:

Secretary of State George P. Shultz met privatley today with Saadun Hammadi, Iraq's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and raised American concerns about Iraq's use of chemical weapons.

Mr. Redman said after the hourlong session: ''The Secretary stressed to Dr. Hammadi that we attach great importance to the further development of our relationship with Iraq, but that we do not intend to pursue this course if illegal Iraqi use of chemical weapons and other human rights abuses continue.''

Although Mr. Hammadi had no prepared remarks for reporters, as he left the State Deparment he was faced by pro-Kurdish demonstrators and reporters.

He said of the charges of gas use, ''This is absolutely baseless, and this has not taken place at all.''

In Congress, Senator Claiborne Pell characterized the Iraqi attacks as ''genocide.'' Tonight, he introduced legislation calling for punitive sanctions against Iraq, such as a halt to Federally backed commodity credits and other loan guarantees, and a ban on oil imports from that country.

It is unclear whether Congress, which faces a crowded legislative calendar, will take up the measure before it adjourns in early October. Such action almost certainly would prompt opposition from the Administration, which has stopped short of calling Iraq's offensive against the Kurds genocide, a Senate aide said. No similar measure was proposed in the House.

A State Department official said the Administration had not seen the proposal by Senator Pell, a Rhode Island Democrat, and declined to comment on it.

Use of any chemical weapon is considered a clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, but officials at the State Department and the White House, speaking privately, said there were technical ambiguities in international law regarding the use of such weapons by a sovereign nation within its own borders.

''There's nothing in international law that prohibits that,'' said an Administration official. But he added that the United States could, had and would condemn the action on human rights and moral grounds alone.

Although the Administration believes the protocol's other provisions allow for a strong case that internal use of such weapons violate the Geneva accords, he said, ''There's not much we can do.''

From the Congressional Record, Senator Pell's own words in the Senate:

I, along with the distinguished chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Helms, have tried very hard to call attention to the persecution of the Kurds, including by introducing the first-ever sanctions bill against Iraq in 1988 for its use of poison gas against the Kurds.

Since then a wealth of evidence has been uncovered documenting Iraq's brutality against the Kurds, much of which was written in Iraq's own hand. The Foreign Relations Committee--particularly through the vigorous efforts of former staff member, now United States Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith--led an effort to retrieve more than 18 tons of Iraqi Secret Police documents captured by the Kurds in 1991, which charts out Iraq's criminal behavior in excruciating detail. Human Rights Watch, the independent human rights organization, has done a superb job of analyzing those documents to mount an overwhelming case that Iraq has engaged in genocide against the Kurds.

This is a story that must be told. As some of my colleagues may know, the issue of genocide has a particularly strong resonance for me. Just after World War II, my father, Herbert Claiborne Pell, played a significant role in seeing that genocide would be considered a war crime. Although he met stiff resistance, my father ultimately succeeded and I learned much from his tenacity and commitment to principle. The world must oppose genocide wherever and whenever it occurs; Halabja cannot be forgotten, and Iraq must be held accountable for its atrocities against the Kurds. . .

[ . . . ]

I wish I could say that there is a happy ending to the tragic story of the Kurds in Iraq, and that there was a lesson learned by the Iraqi leadership. Sadly, I cannot. Although the Iraqi Kurds now control a significant portion of Kurdistan--a consequence of the Persian Gulf war--Saddam's ill treatment of the Kurds continues. Iraqi agents continually carry out terrorist acts against Kurdish targets, and Iraq maintains an airtight blockade of the Kurdish-controlled provinces. Since there also is a U.N. embargo on all of Iraq, the Kurds are forced to live under the unbearable economic weight of a dual embargo. In addition, Kurds in other portions of the region--particularly in Iran and Turkey--have been subjected to serious abuses of human rights and outright repression, demonstrating that the Kurdish plight knows no boundaries. . .

Ah, if only there were more senators like Claiborne Pell . . . Rest in peace, old friend.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
~ Elie Wiesel.

LOCKHEED MARTIN IN BUSINESS WITH BAGHDAD

"Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do."
~ Aldous Huxley.

My good friend, Anonymous, dropped off a couple of URLs in the comments to the last post. The first is from Reuters:

The Iraqi government has asked for information about buying 36 F-16 fighter aircraft built by Lockheed Martin Corp, the U.S. Defense Department said on Friday.

The request, received Aug. 27, is being reviewed "in the normal course of business" as part of the U.S. government-to-government arms sale process, said Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman.

Updated F-16s are among the world's most advanced multirole fighters and a powerful symbol of military ties to the United States.

Iraq's interest in the fighter jet, reported first by The Wall Street Journal, could spark concerns among neighbors worried about advanced arms in the hands of a country still facing major internal challenges.

[ . . . ]

Flush with billions of dollars from oil sales, Iraq is emerging as the biggest client for a wide range of U.S. weapons -- a shot in the arm for defense contractors such as Lockheed, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp, General Dynamics Corp and Raytheon Co.

Among other systems, Iraq is seeking more than 400 armored vehicles plus six C-130 transport planes built by Lockheed, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier.

On July 30, the Pentagon notified Congress that Iraq also was seeking to buy 24 Textron Inc Bell Armed 407 or 24 Boeing AH-6 helicopters along with 565 120mm mortars, 665 81mm mortars, 200 AGM-114M Hellfire missiles and other arms that could be worth $2.4 billion.

More, from the WSJ:

There are potential pitfalls both for Iraq and U.S. officials in the move. A steady cadre of well-trained Iraqi pilots will need time to learn the planes' tactics and weapons, and ground crews will have to maintain them to high standards to avoid performance or safety problems. The U.S. currently uses a wide variety of planes for air support in Iraq, so it's unclear how big a role Iraqi F-16s could play.

The U.S. has previously seen weapons meant for fragile allies end up in unfriendly hands, as with Iran in 1979. The U.S. will have to consider how advanced F-16s and their weapons, such as satellite-guided bombs, should be.

The F-16 purchase must be reviewed by the Pentagon, Congress and the State Department. The F-16s would allow the Iraqis to carry out their own airstrikes on insurgent positions, something they currently need the U.S. to do for them. That shortcoming was a serious problem during the initial days of the Iraqi army's Basra assault in March, which didn't break in the Iraqis' favor until British and American warplanes bombed the positions of the Mahdi Army, Iraq's largest Shiite militia, throughout the city.

Air power is becomingly increasingly important in Iraq, where the amount of ordnance dropped by U.S. planes has jumped in recent months as U.S. and Iraqi forces press to eradicate the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other militant groups. Though the F-16 is a fighter designed to shoot down enemy aircraft, it can carry precision-guided bombs and missiles that can be used to support ground forces. The plane also is armed with a cannon that can be used for close air-support missions.

[ . . . ]

The F-16 would represent a significant upgrade for the Iraqi military, and -- depending on how the planes were outfitted with radar and other electronic systems -- could give it some of the most advanced fighter aircraft in the region. The planes can be equipped advanced missiles and bombs, and would give Iraq a more potent air force than it had under Saddam Hussein, when the Iraqi air force mainly consisted of Russian and French fighters.

With a fleet of U.S.-made fighters, Iraq would be able to better match up against neighbors like Iran, which relies on Russian and Iranian-made fighters and aging American jets. U.S. analysts cautioned, however, that Iraq would still have one of the weaker air forces in the region.

This is the same excuse used by the US to arm Saddam and encourage him in his war against Iran, with catastrophic consequences for the Kurdish people.

More, from the Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, whose congressional district includes the Lockheed Martin plant, said the request signals the Iraqi government’s intent to take responsibility for its own security to hasten the timetable for phasing out the U.S. military presence.

"We keep saying that the Iraqis have to take care of their own security," Granger said. "If the request is approved, then it would help move them toward providing their own security."

Granger, who has made three trips to Iraq, said its air force "is very, very weak" because of lack of resources. But with Iraq’s expanding oil wealth, the government is increasingly capable of buying Western military technology and has made plans to purchase U.S. helicopters, tanks, armored vehicles and other weapon systems.

Under dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq once had a formidable air force composed largely of Soviet aircraft. But the force was largely demolished in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and offered no resistance to U.S. air power during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

So what should all this tell Kurds? It says: You're screwed! Again! Second URL from Anonymous, from the AFP:

The speaker of northern Iraq's regional parliament warned Baghdad on Monday about the purchase of high-tech US military hardware, amid concerns the weapons could be used against them.

"The Kurds demand guarantees from the countries selling weapons to Iraq that they will not be used against our people and other Iraqis," said Adnan al-Mufti in a speech to MPs in the regional capital of Arbil.

[ . . . ]

"We want the Iraqi government to be strong and able to defend the sovereignty of the country but our concern is related to the crisis that has happened in Khanaqin," Mufti said.

He was referring to tension that flared last month between Baghdad and Kurdish leaders when Iraqi forces ordered Kurdish political parties to vacate their offices in Khanaqin, a district in the central province of Diyala.

Khanaqin, which includes a string of villages and some of Iraq's oil reserves, is home to about 175,000 people, most of them Kurdish Shiites.

During the Arabisation policies of former dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, a large number of Kurdish Shiites were displaced by force from Khanaqin. Villages came under fierce Iraqi air strikes.

Guarantees? Adnan al-Mufti wants guarantees? Is this guy for real?

Forget about seeking phony guarantees from backstabbers like the US or Baghdad and get ready for more airstrikes like those at Xanaqîn . . . or maybe like those at Helebçe. In those days, the US knew very well what Saddam's regime was up to, what it was using advanced weapons systems for, and it did nothing. Has everyone already forgotten that "covert action should not be confused with missionary work"?

The KRG and the two ruling families of South Kurdistan aren't concerned when Turkey uses the very same type of aircraft to bomb its regions, which it has done since December. They weren't concerned when Turkey dropped cluster bombs in the same regions last summer. Nor were they concerned when Lockheed Martin lobbyist, Joseph Ralston, was appointed "PKK coordinator" for Turkey.

No, the KRG and the two ruling families have forgotten all about covert action and missionary work. Is it hubris that convinces one to trust the one who's betrayed you so many times in the past?

It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that The Cohen Group is coordinating Baghdad's efforts to buy all that sophisticated ordnance, especially the F16s. The Cohen Group was working on arming the region at the beginning of this year:

When Congress gets back to business in the new year, one of its priorities will be consideration of the Bush administration’s request for a massive arms sale - in the neighborhood of $20 billion - to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states.

Israel and Egypt also stand to gain billions more in U.S. weapons as part of the package Congress will review.

The proposed deal is controversial because of the Saudi component. Given the Saudi government’s questionable record on fighting terrorism and curtailing terrorism financing, its funding of extremist wahabbist mosques, its supply of foreign fighters into Iraq and a judicial system that recently ordered 200 lashes for a rape victim, some in Congress don’t believe the kingdom should be rewarded with top-of-the-line American weaponry.

[ . . . ]

One of the of the big names supporting the deal is William Cohen, the former senator and defense secretary under President Bill Clinton and regular commentator on CNN.

Cohen has opined on the cable network that the arms deal is good for the U.S. and good for Saudi Arabia.

“The issue really is, are we going to help them modernize their forces so they can be a force to contend with an expansionist Iran, with Iran trying to spread its Shia and revolutionary zeal,” Cohen said last summer when the administration first proposed the sale.



“I think it’s an important idea,” Cohen said on CNN. The Persian Gulf countries “are worried about Iran. In order to help them prepare for their defense capabilities, we should be the country supplying it, so it will be interoperable with our own forces.



“They can buy it from us, they can buy it from the French, the British, the Russians, the Chinese or other country, potentially,” said Cohen. “So the real issue is, are we going continue to solidify our own influence or have it undermined by other countries quite willing to move in and take over the position that we had to date.”



While Cohen cloaked the sale in terms of what is best for American interests, he left out that the weapons sale is good business for him personally.


As chief of the Cohen Group, a lobbying and consulting firm based in the nation’s capital, Cohen represents some of the country’s largest weapons manufacturers, companies that stand to benefit from the weapons sale.

Including, of course, Lockheed Martin, as well as a bunch of other corporate murderers. But the point around which Katil Cohen was talking was the Almighty Dollar. With the American economy already in the toilet, you'd be an idiot to think that Congress will not approve the sale of fighter aircraft and all the rest to Baghdad.

All that talk about being careful or having concerns or taking the sale seriously is propaganda.

And where's that so-called Kurdish president of Iraq in all this, or his son, the so-called lobbyist for Southern Kurdish interests in DC? How much of this deal is going to end up in their bank accounts?

For more than five years now, the Barzanîs and Talabanîs have been busy with a bunch of bullshit construction projects in South Kurdistan, consisting mostly of hotels, resorts, and shopping malls. They've wasted precious time and money on these fantasies, when they should have been arming themselves with more than small arms and peşmêrge. Instead of counting profits, they should have been looking to the future and investing in pilot training and air defense systems, among other things.

We also know for a fact that the US, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey have passed around US and Israeli-acquired intelligence that fueled recent attacks against the Kurdish Freedom Movement. They'll all cooperate with the same intel-sharing against Southern Kurdish peşmêrge, too.

Now what to do? Stop all cooperation. Look to the East. Look to the North. Send the best and brightest--not Barzanîs and Talabanîs--to Russia and China to be trained as pilots and in air defense systems. Then buy the weapons systems necessary to defend Kurdistan. Because, as always, the US is going to look right at you and say nothing when Baghdad bombs you with American weapons.

TWENTY YEARS

"I will kill them all with chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them!"
~ Ali Hassan al-Majid.

A memory, from Kendal Nezan:

The town of Halabja, with 60,000 inhabitants, lies on the southern fringe of Iraqi Kurdistan, a few miles from the border with Iran. On 15 March 1988 it fell to the Peshmerga resistance fighters of Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, supported by Iranian revolutionary guards.

The next morning Iraqi bombers appeared out of a clear blue sky. The people of Halabja were used to the successive attacks and counter-attacks of the Iraq-Iran war that had ravaged the region since September 1980. They thought they were in for the usual reprisal raid. Those who had time huddled in makeshift shelters. The rest were taken by surprise. Wave after wave of Iraqi Migs and Mirages dropped chemical bombs on the unsuspecting inhabitants. The town was engulfed in a sickly stench like rotten apples. The bombing stopped at nightfall and it began to rain hard. Iraqi troops had already destroyed the local power station, so the survivors began to search the mud with torches for the dead bodies of their loved ones.

The scene that greeted them in the morning defied description. The streets were strewn with corpses. People had been killed instantaneously by chemicals in the midst of the ordinary acts of everyday life. Babies still sucked their mothers’ breasts. Children held their parents’ hands, frozen to the spot like a still from a motion picture. In the space of a few hours 5,000 people had died. The 3,200 who no longer had families were buried in a mass grave.

[ . . . ]

In point of fact, Iraq had already used chemical weapons against the Kurds on 15 April 1987. It happened two weeks after Hassan Ali Al Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, was appointed head of the Northern Bureau set up to deal with Kurdistan. On 29 March of that year the Revolutionary Command Council had issued Decree No. 160, granting him full powers to proceed with the final solution of the Kurdish problem. A problem which the Iraqi regime had failed to solve despite intensive Arabisation, transfers of population, the execution of “ringleaders”, and a war waged on and off since 1961.

[ . . . ]

Despite the enormous public outrage at the gas attack on Halabja, France, which is a depositary of the Geneva Convention of 1925, confined itself to an enigmatic communiqué condemning the use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world. The UN dispatched Colonel Dominguez, a Spanish military expert, to the scene. In a report published on 26 April 1988, he confined himself to recording that chemical weapons had been used once again both in Iran and in Iraq and that the number of civilian victims was increasing. On the same day the UN Secretary-General stated that, with respect to both the weapons themselves and those who were using them, it was difficult to determine the nationalities involved.

Clearly, Iraq’s powerful allies did not want Baghdad condemned. In August 1988 the United Nations Sub-Committee on Human Rights voted by 11 votes to 8 not to condemn Iraq for human rights violations. Only the Scandinavian countries, Australia and Canada, together with bodies like the European Parliament and the Socialist International, saved their honour by clearly condemning Iraq.

Halabja: The politics of memory:

Iraqi propaganda, backed by its ally the United States, either denied what happened, played down the significance of these events, or distorted them beyond recognition.

Within a week of the attack, the United States department of state, basing itself on information provided by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), claimed that Iran had also used poison gas in Halabja. This information created enough confusion that the United Nations Security Council delayed a resolution for two months and then condemned both sides for using chemical weapons. The DIA's account was augmented two years later by a former CIA analyst, Stephen Pelletiere, who suggested, using the same DIA data, that the majority of Halabja casualties had been victims of Iran's use of gas. Pelletiere has repeated his claim on numerous occasions, but has never presented any evidence in addition to the vague speculations made by the DIA at the time

All of this made Colin Powell's 2003 visit to Helebce an exceptional act of hypocrisy.

WEB OF DECEIT

"I will kill them [Kurds] all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them! The international community and those who listen to them."
~ Ali Hassan al-Majid.

I came across this series of Youtube videos through an article by Barry Lando at Truthdig.

In light of the fact that the US and Shi'a bumbled a rushed execution of Saddam specifically in order to cover up US invovlement in the Anfal campaign. Of course, the US had to cover up the complicity of NATO-ally Turkey's involvement in the chemical genociding of Kurds. In a piece of news that briefly flashed unnoticed through the media at the end of last year:

And, in a revelation likely to stir anger among Kurdish survivors, the memo orders the Iraqi officers “to cooperate with the Turkish side, according to the cooperation protocol with them to chase all the refugees”. No detail was given of the alleged agreement between Turkey and Iraq. Ankara has long opposed the idea of an independent Kurdish homeland in northern Iraq, but it has never been proved that Turkey cooperated with Saddam’s forces during Anfal, which prosecutors describe as a genocide. While the document touching on Turkish links was read out, sound was cut off to trial reporters and no discussion of the memo could be heard, although the Arabic-language document could still be read on the court screens.

Specifically:

Evidence relating to Saddam Hussein's alleged use of poison gas against Kurdish civilians was given to his genocide trial in secret on Thursday, so as not to embarrass Turkey.

After seeing a string of memos issued by Saddam's chief of staff in 1988 ordering "special ammunition" attacks, the court cut off its microphones while studying documents relating to Iraq's northern neighbour.

"We will now cut the microphones because this concerns Iraqi-Turkish relations," said chief prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, who then presented various documents while the sound in the reporters' box was cut off.

No details were given of the evidence presented in this part of the trial, nor was it explained how it touched on Turkey.

Turkey has long used chemical weapons against the PKK, and even as late as last year. Turkey has also used Greek Cypriots as guinea pigs to test chemical weapons. Since the information appeared last year in a brief by The Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, all of this news is well known by the Washington regime, as well as every other government on the planet. Of course, it's not unusual for fascist regimes like Turkey to gas "undesirable" populations. Germany did the same thing during World War 2. Nor is it unusual for the international community to be complicit with the gassing of "undesirables."

For more on Turkish aggression plans, check an article from the American Hellenic Institute, and DozaMe had a post on Turkey's use of chemical weapons against PKK in 2003.

I have one other comment on Barry Lando's article. His Chemical Ali quote is inaccurate. Lando uses the following:

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!”

Ali Hassan al-Majid did not say, "A curse on the international community." What he actually said, which was recorded on tape, is the following:

I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them! The international community and those who listen to them.

Al-Majid said, "Fuck them!" so why is it that the West consistently misquotes al-Majid? Is it that the West is afraid to use the word "fuck?" Is that because the word is considered "obscene?" This is ironic in the extreme because which is truly obscene, the use of the word "fuck" or the use of chemical weapons?

And let's not forget that the attitude summarized in al-Majid's exclamation of "Fuck them!" is the exact same attitude the international community and the American administration continues to hold against all those who refuse to acquiesce to imperialism.

There is in no way any distinction between Ali Hassan al-Majid, on the one hand, and the American regime, with its toadies in the international community, on the other.

MARCH 16, 1988