Fed. American Scientists re Iraq
Vatican campaign against Iraqi sanctions

9/5/00 PDF Human Rights Impact of Economic Sanctions on Iraq bkgd paper by Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights for ExecComm on Humanitarian Affairs U.K.

First use of poison gas bombs anywhere by the British in Iraq.

Steven Muhlberger, assoc. history prof.
Nipissing Univ. (Ontario, Canada)

"Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels…"

Henry IV 4:4, counsel to his son   Shakespeare

Bellicose Saddam jangles world nerves
Few believe Saddam still harbors enough military might to seriously trouble Kuwait shielded by US & UK
9.19.00   AFP English

Dubai   With a finely timed accusation that Kuwait is stealing Iraqi oil, Saddam Hussein has set Western & Gulf nerves jangling once again. It took only a brief statement from Iraq's Oil Minister Amer Rashid last Thursday to ignite fears in Kuwait of a new war over the emirate's oil riches. The same accusation sparked the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, taking the world by surprise.
This time U.S. & Kuwaiti leaders immediately fired off warnings of grave consequences if Iraq's belligerency spills over. But Iraq has defiantly r7epeated the charges daily and warned it will take "adequate measures" to protect its rights and estimated the theft at 300,000 barrels per day.

[ The U.S. is poisoning your water in violation of the Geneva Convention which kills a million of your kids, U.N. arms inspectors plant covert espionage devices under pretense of disarmament, neighbor Iran harbors wildcat rebels shooting 122mm rounds into your citizens' homes, neighbor Turkey flies twice weekly airstrikes whenever it pleases and neighbor Kuwait steals slant-drilled oil.   Wouldn't you be "bellicose" ? ]

auth."Sheriff & Outlaws in the Global Village Menard Press,
sr research fellow Royal United Services Inst. for Def.Studies,
founder, BASIC (British American Security Info. Council)

By this time next Sunday, Tony Blair will have finished discussing the attack on Iraq at President Bush's Texas ranch. Mr Blair & his advisers are not just resigned to having to go along with the US; there is genuine enthusiasm for taking action against a dictator whom the PM believes to be public enemy no. 1. But these enthusiasms are confined to the inner circle at No 10. Chief of Defence Staff Sir Michael Boyce, has reflected the views of senior military establishment by suggesting we should learn to live with weapons of mass destruction, and that if, as he put it, Britain was deliberately going to put its "hand in the mangle" of Afghanistan, we should not simultaneously do so in Iraq. Scepticism about military expeditions to Iraq and recent troop deployment to Afghanistan has spread beyond the usual suspects. A retired wing commander rang me to express his fears about our troops operating under the command of the U.S. army. His peacetime service under U.S. air force generals had been bad enough, he said, and US army generals were of poorer quality.

This uncertainty means that Mr Blair has to take this opportunity to find out what military action Mr Bush really intends in his expanding war against terror. Almost as important is the need to get an understanding of how the US decision-making process works. As one US intelligence official told me, only 8 people in Washington are now allowed to read even quite low-level intelligence assessments, which for decades had been circulated to several dozen. Mr Bush's inner team already had a notoriously narrow worldview and are now preventing even their senior advisers from being properly briefed. The broad strategy is very clear. For GOP strategists, the desire to crush President Saddam Hussein is not really about revenge or weapons of mass destruction. It has far more to do with the need to show that it is not possible for any state or individual to fight the U.S. and survive. For today's GOP, "Make My Day" is a motto for the real world.

The plans being considered are intended to provoke internal coup & rebellion by the Kurdish & Shia minorities. The optimum scenario involves massive air attack supporting ground attack from 3 directions. An assault by 30,000 US troops already in Kuwait accompanied by seizure of Iraqi airbases by 82nd Airborne Div. with, in the north, assistance of the Turkish army. Supporters of this view outside govt include Pres. Reagan's former arms control adviser Ken Adelman, who believes that the war would be over in a month. It could take place as early as this summer, be preceded by the production of evidence of Saddam's weapons programs, and base its legitimacy under the UN on the argument that Saddam is in breach of the ceasefire agreement that ended the 1991 Gulf War. In this strategy, American troops would be hailed as liberators in Baghdad, and exiled Iraqi officers would form a new govt.

Concerns over Iraq's use of chemical or biological weapons on Israel, the reaction in the Arab world, and lack of international support would be dismissed as inevitable in any circumstance and so, it is argued, we might as well get it over with. Mr Bush's natural decisiveness is supported by his National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. She takes as a model the way she helped Mr Bush's father push through German unification in the face of objections from both Margaret Thatcher & François Mitterrand. A slower build-up, leading to an assault by 300,000 troops around the end of the year may be more likely, as it would give a higher chance of military victory, but it runs the risk that Saddam or other international events will delay things still further. In this scenario a cat & mouse game over UN weapons inspections would be allowed to run on until after the US mid-term elections and until a massive force could be assembled.

All the current sabre-rattling is simply designed to intimidate Saddam into compliance. But a game of triple bluff is also possible, in which Saddam is made to believe the current rhetoric is a bluff and then is attacked anyway.
It is unlikely that the decision has been made yet. For from behind closed doors can be heard the muffled sounds of an epic Washington dogfight among Mr Bush & his advisers. Public support for the President as well as the collapse of the Taliban have concealed incompetence & mismanagement of war against terror. Sr defence official in London recently told me he considered the "axis of evil" speech as little more than the justification for spending billions on hi-tech weapons favoured by DefSec Rumsfeld but largely irrelevant to the war on terrorism. Meanwhile, Mr Bush has left the coastguard underfunded. There is also no cash to produce a uniform system for turning Arabic words into English, so someone being observed by different agencies can elude detection simply by having his name written differently in English by the people trying to catch him.

US inter-service rivalries have also got in the way of the effective conduct of the war. At first USAF insisted on using B-2 & B-1 bombers as well as the veteran B-52s, in order to justify their vast cost, but their defects soon proved too obvious and the US fell back on the old and reliable B-52s. In recent weeks the ill-fated attack by U.S. army at Gardez was the product of the desperate attempt by the army to get in on the action, previously dominated by U.S. Marines. Up to Tora Bora, all the glory had gone to the USAF's carrier-based "top guns", special forces and the marines. Fearing that it would lose out in the defence budget, army chiefs pushed for a mission. The result was a laboriously planned attack by troops of the 10th Mountain & 101st Airborne Div. which was comprehensively ambushed by the guerrillas. The ensuing row resulted in the urgent request for British help, one of our major assets being that we are not part of the inter-service rivalries.

Communication has virtually broken down between U.S. top commanders. Gen. Franks refuses to talk to or visit the Pentagon even to give press briefings. In a deliberate power play, Donald Rumsfeld walked out of a top White House meeting called by Ms Rice on options for attacking Iraq after just 5 minutes, saying he was too busy to stay.
Such is his influence that colleagues fear that he may simply stop by the White House one evening and get Mr Bush to sign the attack order on Iraq. His decisiveness might be reassuring. But both he & Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Richard Myers seem dangerously ignorant of critical details. At the press conference following the killing of 8t U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, neither was able to talk about the poor performance of helicopters at high altitude where their rotor blades struggle to get a grip on the thin air. Behind a cloak of public silence there is much ego- driven headbutting and a very narrow sense of what is important.

Such is the closed circle of US policy-making that whatever Tony Blair learns at the Crawford Ranch will be more valuable than anything that MI6 could produce. I recall the honest query of one of Mr Rumsfeld's aides: "Why are we getting all this support from Blair? Thatcher we could understand, but we know he's not one of us." Why indeed? Mr Blair needs to return from the depths of Texas with an answer to convince his own party, his military top brass and the British people. If he does not, much more than just his premiership will be at stake.

Prince Charles against war On Iraq
2.9.03   Phillip SF Indymedia

A serious rift has opened up between Prince Charles & the govt because he is seen to be against a war on Iraq and against Bush. Whitehall also believes the prince is sympathetic to the view of his Arab friends that war on Saddam Hussein is a bid by the US to grab a stake in the Middle East's oil. Despite being colonel-in-chief to 17 regiments, Charles has shown little public support for the soldiers, airmen and sailors about to risk their lives in a Gulf conflict. There are also worries that he makes no secret of his anti-American views in conversations with members of Arab royal families and their leading officials.

A Whitehall source said: "Downing Street tries not to involve the prince in anything because they have concerns over how he will react. He has this lunatic view he is the voice of the people." A diplomatic insider said: "It would be very unhelpful if the prince were to indicate anything other than unswerving support for the govt."
The prince's stance was illustrated last week when, in his role as colonel-in-chief of the Paras, he said a stiff, formal farewell to his men as they prepared to leave for the Gulf. His visit to the Parachute Regiment barracks in Colchester does not merit a single line on his official website. It was not announced by his own office. Yet his opening of an Islamic education ctr in Leicester 2 weeks ago is reported on the website with 19 paragraphs, 2 pictures and a full transcript of his speech.

Charles is rightly feted for his pioneering work creating understanding & tolerance between Islam & other faiths. He also holds many honorary military positions incl chief to the Welsh Guards, the Paras and the Gurkhas. He is Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy, Air Marshal in the RAF and Lt General in the Army.
Critics say the prince likes to cut a dash in the Paras' coveted red beret with a chestful of medals on his tunic. But they ask how the men of the Parachute Regiment would feel if they knew their colonel's true feelings on the war. The prince's views have led to a worrying split with the American leadership. 2 months ago, Charles had to abandon an official visit to the U.S. because the White House made it clear he wasn't wanted.

The snub, directly from President Bush, came after security sources advised that Charles's presence in America would be "very unhelpful". Washington diplomats were concerned the prince would show his disapproval during meetings with President Bush. Charles, who reads the Koran every day & often adopts Islamic dress at home, spends long hours discussing MidEast problems with Saudi royal family members.

One of his closest friends is former Saudi ambassador Ghazi Algosaibi who wrote a poem in praise of the first woman suicide bomber. Algosaibi said that the "doors of heaven are opened for her".
He once described the Israelis as worse than Nazis and he was a regular guest at Highgrove, Prince Charles's country home, before he was recalled by his govt last year.

Charles is also close to King Abdullah of Jordan. His glamorous wife Queen Rania is a close friend of the prince's partner, Camilla Parker Bowles and is a regular guest at St James's Palace. In private the prince talks about "American imperialism" collapsing the whole of the MidEast. "Of course Saddam is an evil man, but American imperialism will not solve the problem," he said in one discussion.
He sympathises with his Saudi royal friends when they talk about their fears of America's true intentions in Iraq. One close friend said: "They believe the US intends to collapse the whole Gulf economy and take control of oil. "Once that happens the tensions in Israel & Palestine will explode."

Charles's meeting 3 days ago with French President Jacques Chirac was fraught with diplomatic concerns. Before the meeting the Foreign Office asked the Prince of Wales's staff if he would promise not to discuss Iraq. They said yes, but Charles would feel free to give an opinion if Chirac raised Iraq first. Downing Street is understood to have washed its hands of winning Charles's support.
"At such a sensitive time his views are wrong, wrong, wrong," said a Whitehall source. "Unfortunately he is making them a little too widely known "

Baghdad, Iraq   Iraqis awoke Saturday to television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam Hussein's neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope.

In Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country.
There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare was not far off the daily average, 92 from bombings and death squads.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Saddam in Tikrit, his hometown.
Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death 11.5.06

By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq's savior, not its tyrant and scourge.
"He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians," Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp.
Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: "You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution."
"I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans," Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times.
"God damn you," the guard said.
"God damn you," responded Saddam.

New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam. Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.
Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site.
Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.
The floor dropped out of the gallows.

"The tyrant has fallen," someone in the group of onlookers shouted. The video showed a close-up of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope. Then came another voice: "Let him swing for three minutes."
The responses within Iraq to Saddam's death echoed the larger reaction across the Middle East, with his enemies rejoicing and his defenders proclaiming him a martyr. While Iranians and Kuwaitis welcomed the death of the leader who led wars against each of their countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the execution prevented exposure of the secrets and crimes the former dictator committed during his brutal rule.

Some Arab govts denounced the timing the 69-year-old former president's hanging just before the start of the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha. Libya announced a three-day official mourning period and canceled all celebrations for Eid.
Within Iraq and across the world, the airwaves were alive with pictures of Saddam in death, a bruise on his cheek, his neck elongated and twisted impossibly to the right, grisly proof that the man who had tormented and killed so many during a bloody quarter-century rule was truly dead.

But some Iraqis, like 34-year-old Haider Hamed, a candy store owner in east Baghdad, wondered what would really change with the execution of Saddam, who was just four months shy of his 70th birthday.
"He's gone, but our problems continue," said the Shiite Muslim, whose uncle was killed in one of Saddam's many brutal purges. "We brought problems on ourselves after Saddam because we began fighting Shiite on Sunni and Sunni on Shiite."
At least 80 Iraqis died in bombings and other attacks Saturday, and police said 12 more tortured bodies were found dumped in Baghdad. The U.S. military announced six more service-members, 3 soldiers & 3 Marines, were killed.

The execution took place on the penultimate day of the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to an AP count.
Arab satellite television channels said Saddam's body had been be returned to Tikrit for Sunday burial next to his sons Odai and Qusai in the main cemetery in the nearby town of Ouja, where Saddam was born. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the Americans in Mosul in July 2003.
State-run Al-Iraqiya television later confirmed the body had been handed to the Salahuddin province governor and the leader of Saddam's Albu-Nassir clan.

Um Abdullah, a Sunni and teacher in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, said she would wear black to mourn the city's favorite son.
"Saddam will be a hero in our eyes," she said. "I have five kids and I will teach them to take revenge on Americans."
Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took into the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 went into the streets to protest the execution.
Among minority Sunnis there was deep anger, born not only of Saddam's execution but of the loss of their decades-long political and economic dominance that began with Saddam's ouster in the U.S. invasion nearly four years ago.
"The president, the leader, Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs," said Yahya al-Attawi, who led prayer at a towering Sunni mosque constructed by Saddam in Tikrit.

There were cheers at the cafeteria of a U.S. outpost in Baghdad as soldiers having breakfast learned Saddam had been hanged. But members of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn't get them home any faster, and therefore didn't make much difference.
"Nothing really changes," said Capt. Dave Eastburn, 30, of Columbus, Ohio. "The militias run everything now, not Saddam."
Staff Sgt. David Earp, who also fought in 1991's Operation Desert Storm, said the execution worried him.
"In my opinion, something big is going to happen," said Earp, of Colorado Springs, Colo. "There will be a response. Probably not today because they know we are looking for one, but soon."

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did not wait long to challenge the new Bush administration. Responding to an American plan to create "smart sanctions," Iraq promptly turned off the spigot on the bulk of its oil exports. Saddam's envoys are touring capitals in a campaign to intimidate countries into opposing the U.S. plan. Iraq's military is on alert, while Baghdad is touting a reward for military personnel who shoot down U.S. or British jets patrolling the no-fly zones. "We are approaching a new confrontation," Saddam warned his people earlier this month. This time, Saddam clearly means business. He has spent the past several years chipping away at the decade-old sanctions regime and is eager to destroy it. He has billions of dollars in the bank. And he has rarely been so popular in the Arab world, with his support of the Palestinian intifada. Emboldened, Saddam is pledging to withhold his oil until Washington backs down. The showdown begins this week when the UN holds a public debate on the U.S. plan. "It's a game of chicken," says one U.S. govt analyst. "He is ready to stick it out for the long term." Officials believe he can hold out through 2001.

Failing sanctions
The current administration came into office eager to polish off the enemy that many of them faced in the Gulf War, when the elder George Bush was president. The first order of business: salvaging a failing sanctions regime. "Everybody knows that he can smuggle through the Jordanian and Syrian borders a whole herd of elephants and the Americans will know about it only when satellites spot the elephants grazing in the Baghdad amusement park," says Amatzia Baram, a leading Iraq expert at the University of Haifa.

Secretary of State Colin Powell's answer was "smart sanctions." The idea has strong intellectual appeal: Free up more goods to reach Iraqi civilians, while tightening controls on weapons-related materials and restricting Iraq's revenues from oil smuggling. But the reality is that new restrictions are likely unworkable. Tightening the embargo depends on Iraq's neighbors, many of whom are heavily reliant on Iraqi trade and oil. Take Jordan, which is known to be a busy corridor for smuggling into Iraq. The tiny nation receives its entire oil supply from Iraq at heavily discounted rates. An additional $450 million in exports to Iraq is a crucial stimulus for its weak economy. If Jordan clamps down on its border monitoring, Saddam has explicitly threatened to cut off the cheap oil and buy goods elsewhere. Going along with the U.S. plan "would be suicidal," says a Jordanian official.
The U.N. resolution only pares down the list of goods that Iraq cannot purchase under the oil-for-food program. New monitoring procedures are left to a later date. With Russia opposed, the plan's fate is uncertain. But even if it passes, the odds are that Washington will end up relaxing the sanctions without getting any corresponding tightening. So far, Saddam's oil cutoff has had little effect on world markets, mostly because Saudi Arabia pledged to fill the gap. "There seems to be little likelihood that Iraq can exercise political leverage by toying with the oil market," says James Placke of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Where he could score politically would be in shooting down a U.S. fighter jet patrolling the no-fly zone. U.S. military officials have seen a marked increase in the accuracy of Iraqi air defenses in recent months. U.S. News has learned that the White House is concerned that the no-fly operation is not having much effect on Saddam's behavior. As part of a broader review, officials are looking for new targets they could hit to inflict more pain on the regime. The most controversial part of U.S. policy remains its commitment to effecting a change of regime. U.S. officials are sending an additional $6 million to the Iraqi National Congress, mostly to create a radio station to broadcast to Iraq. But in a conclusion many Western govts share, Israeli security sources dismiss Iraqi opposition groups as corrupt and ineffective, finding Saddam's grip as firm as ever.

A tyrant 40 years in the making
3.14.03   Roger Morris NY Times

On the brink of war, both supporters & critics of U.S. policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass. America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began 2 decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's.
Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. 40 years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who 5 years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since.
America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, much as Ronald Reagan & George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980's against the common foe of Iran.
By 1961, the Kassem regime had grown more assertive. Seeking new arms rivaling Israel's arsenal, threatening Western oil interests, resuming his country's old quarrel with Kuwait, talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East, all steps Saddam Hussein was to repeat in some form, Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed.

In 1963 Britain & Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other U.S. allies, chiefly France & Germany, resisted. But without significant opposition within the govt, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on.
In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshaled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.'s "Health Alteration Committee" as it was tactfully called, sent Kassem a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.

Then, on 2.8.63, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the govt held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television.
Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. "Almost certainly a gain for our side," National Security Council aide Robert Komer wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.
As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 & 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite, killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated.
No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.

The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. had backed against Kassem and then abandoned.
Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq.
But it wasn't long before there was infighting among Iraq's new rulers. In 1968, after yet another coup, the Baathist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr seized control, bringing to the threshold of power his kinsman, Saddam Hussein.

Again, this coup, amid more factional violence, came with C.I.A. backing. Serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960's, I often heard C.I.A. officers including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a ranking C.I.A. official for the Near East and Africa at the time, speak openly about their close relations with the Iraqi Baathists.
This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek regime change in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.

The Kassem episode raises questions about the war at hand. In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals. How fierce, then, may be the resistance of hundreds of officers, scientists and others identified with Saddam Hussein's long rule? Why should they believe America and its latest Iraqi clients will act more wisely, or less vengefully, now than in the past?

Condoleezza war cry
8.17.02   James Hardy Mirror UK

GWBush's National Security Adviser yesterday admitted the President is pushing ahead with plans to topple Saddam Hussein. Condoleezza Rice said there was a strong moral case for a change of regime in Iraq and the West did not have "the luxury of doing nothing". Leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia are reported to have received blunt letters from the US president warning them: "There will be no turning back from the military option.'' The nearly identical notes give notice of America's intent to oust Saddam and tell them to prepare public opinion. They are also said to disclose that the US is sending soldiers and military equipt to the region. Dr Rice's comments contradict claims by ministers here that war against Saddam is not inevitable.

She said: "He is is an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbours and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, all of us, is a very powerful moral case for regime change." She added: "History is littered with cases of inaction that led to have grave consequences for the world. We just have to look back and ask how many dictators who ended up being a tremendous global threat and killing thousands and, indeed, millions of people, should we have stopped in their tracks. That is really the question." She claimed President Bush had not yet decided how to remove Saddam. But she added, in a BBC radio interview: "We believe the case for regime change is very powerful.
"This is a regime that we know has twice tried, and come closer than we thought at the time, to acquiring nuclear weapons. He has used chemical weapons against his own people, he has invaded his neighbours, he has killed thousands of his own people. He shoots at our planes in the no-fly zones And despite the fact that he lost this war, a war which he started, he negotiates with the UN as if he won the war. I think it is a fairly strong indictment."

Her hardline will cause problems for Tony Blair, already battling MPs opposed to a military attack. Labour MP Gerald Kaufman said: "Bush, himself the most intellectually backward American president of my political lifetime, is surrounded by advisers whose bellicosity is exceeded only by their political, military and diplomatic illiteracy." Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said: "There will be no world order if the most powerful states are entitled to remove other govts at will."

Saddam to be hanged by Sunday   Ex-dictator’s execution expected to be carried out by start of Eid holiday   12.28.06   Richard Engel NBC News

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, sentenced to death for his role in 148 killings in 1982, will have his sentence carried out by Sunday, NBC News reported Thursday. According to a U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, Saddam will be hanged before the start of the Eid religious holiday, which begins this Sunday. The hanging could take place as early as Friday, NBC’s Richard Engel reported.
The U.S. military received a formal request from the Iraqi govt to transfer Saddam to Iraqi authorities, NBC reported on Thursday, which is one of the final steps required before his execution. His sentence, handed down last month, ordered that he be hanged within 30 days.

Earlier Thursday, Saddam’s chief lawyer implored world leaders to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted leader to Iraqi authorities for execution, saying the former dictator should enjoy protection from his enemies as a “prisoner of war.”
“According to the international conventions, it is forbidden to hand a prisoner of war to his adversary,” Saddam’s lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said in Amman, Jordan. “I urge all the international and legal organizations, the United Nations secretary-general, the Arab League and all the leaders of the world to rapidly prevent the American administration from handing the president to the Iraqi authorities,” he told The Associated Press.

Saddam met with two of his half-brothers on Thursday and passed on personal messages to his family, a lawyer said. Badie Aref, one of Saddam's lawyers, said the rare meeting with maternal half-brothers Sabawi and Watban Ibrahim Hassanal-Tikriti, who are in U.S. custody, was at the request of the ousted Iraqi leader and took place inside his heavily guarded prison cell in Baghdad.
Aref said Saddam was in very high spirits and had sensed “something was happening relating to the sentence” when prison guards took away a small radio he had been given several months ago.
“He met Sabawi and Watban and gave them letters to his family in anticipation.... He is clearly unaware of the details of what is happening around him and prepared to give his life as a martyr to his country,” Aref told Reuters by telephone.

Aref said prison sources who told him of the family meeting said Saddam was aware of an appeals court decision to uphold his death sentence for crimes against humanity during his 24-year rule.
“He was in very high spirits and clearly readying himself,” Aref said during a visit to Dubai. “He told them that he was happy he would meet his death at the hands of his enemies and be a martyr and not just languish in prison in oblivion.”
Aref said he was unsure if Saddam's third half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, who was sentenced to death along with the ousted leader, saw Saddam.

An official close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that Saddam would remain in a U.S. military prison until he is handed over to Iraqi authorities on the day of his execution. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the media.
A top govt official disputed the court’s ruling that Saddam must be hanged within 30 days, saying the execution should be held after that time period. The comment comes amid debate over other legal procedures such as whether the presidency is required to approve the execution.

Cardinal Renato Martino, Pope Benedict XVI’s top prelate for justice issues and a former Vatican envoy to the U.N., condemned the death sentence in a newspaper interview published Thursday, saying capital punishment goes against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
After his sentence was given, Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, urged Iraq to ensure a fair appeals process and to refrain from executing Saddam even if the sentence is upheld. Some international legal observers and human rights groups have also called Saddam’s trial unfair because of alleged interference by the Shiite-dominated govt.

Wash.D.C.   The CIA delivered an initial assessment of Iraq's declaration of banned weapons programs to the White House on Wednesday amid growing concerns that the bulk of the 12,000 page dossier consists of previously discredited Iraqi reports.
In particular, officials said, Iraq's account of its nuclear weapons program, totaling 2,081 pages, incl 113-page executive summary, appears to largely duplicate Iraqi declarations delivered to U.N. inspectors in 1996 & 1997.

Thousands more pages that Iraq submitted over the weekend on its biological & chemical weapons programs also appear to be copies of reports that U.N. weapons inspectors repeatedly rejected as inadequate & incomplete between 1995 & 1998, officials said.
"The initial conclusion is there's nothing really new," said one official who is assisting in the review. "What I'm hearing is it's all recycled and [Iraqi claims that] it didn't do anything wrong."

U.S. analysts are esp. looking to see whether Iraq has adequately answered scores of questions left unresolved during the U.N. inspections that ended in 1998, and whether it can explain a body of intelligence since 1998 suggesting that Baghdad has rebuilt at least some of its proscribed weapons programs.
Several Arabic-language portions of the report, incl 300-page section that details Iraqi industrial & other facilities involved in nuclear research or development, have now been translated and are undergoing what the official called a "line-by-line review to see if [Iraq] inserted something that wasn't in previous reports. … Nothing has emerged yet."

White House softened its rhetoric on Iraq this week as the review got underway. But a determination that President Saddam Hussein's regime failed to provide an accurate & complete account of its proscribed weapons programs, as mandated by 11.8.02 resolution by U.N. Security Council, almost certainly would rekindle Bush administration efforts to disarm Baghdad by force
"All indications so far, Iraq has taken a hard line," said former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq & Washington think tank Institute for Science & Intl Security David Albright. "Perhaps Saddam has decided war is inevitable, so why give up anything? Either that, or they want to give things up gradually and see what happens."

Pressure is growing on CIA to complete assessment. Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said Tuesday he planned to complete analysis by Friday and give censored version of raw document to full Security Council as early as Monday. Details are expected to quickly leak at that point.
The council's 5 permanent members, U.S., Britain, Russia, China and France, all of which already have nuclear weapons, are receiving unedited copies of the report. Blix said he would delete esp. sensitive material, incl any blueprints or other designs for nuclear weapons, as well as plans for converting short-range missiles to long-range rockets, before handing over the document. He said he is focusing on 3,000-page section that includes fresh details about Iraq's activities since U.N. inspectors withdrew 4 years ago.

CIA is still studying the trove of documents and CD-ROMs with teams of weapons specialists & other experts from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, State Dept's Intelligence & Research division, Energy Dept's Office of Intelligence, and a group of nuclear scientists & technicians from the Los Alamos National Laboratory NM, among others.
"It's an ongoing process," an intelligence official said of the CIA-led review. He said the agency is providing regular updates to the White House "as our work proceeds."

Gaps in Iraq's previous declarations of its biological & chemical weapons program are of special concern, officials said. And Iraq has a history of using fresh packaging for old reports. Summary of the previous U.N. inspection effort in Iraq issued Jan. 1999 notes Baghdad denied even having a biological weapons program until 1995, for example, and that it used "fraudulent statements, forged documents, misrepresentation of the roles of people and facilities and other specific acts" to perpetuate the deception.
After a senior Iraqi defector first revealed the clandestine effort July 1995, Baghdad issued 3 "full, final and complete" declarations of its germ warfare research and production efforts. The first was declared null & void by Iraq. The second, June 1996, was rejected by U.N. inspectors as incomplete. The third, issued Sept. 1997, "contained no new significant information from the previous one" and was "deficient in all areas," according to the U.N. report.

Iraq then appealed for a review and met a team of U.N. experts in Vienna in March 1998. "Iraq did not present any new information at that meeting and the experts therefore reviewed the same material for the third time," the report notes. The inspectors particularly cited conflicting or insufficient credible details on the production & location not only of such bulk biological warfare agents as anthrax, botulinum toxin, aflatoxin and wheat smut, but also of warheads designed to deliver them.
In many cases, Iraq claimed that it had destroyed the weapons but could produce no proof that it had done so. "They basically gave 'the dog ate my homework' excuse, that when they destroyed their biological & chemical weapons, they destroyed their documents as well," said former U.N. inspector Jonathan Tucker. "We know that's false."

Officials are also looking to see whether Iraq can explain its apparent attempts to procure & import uranium and specialized parts for nuclear weapons development since 1998. One official said Iraqi officials have privately acknowledged making 5 covert attempts since 1998 to obtain highly specialized aluminum tubes from overseas sources. The Iraqis said the tubes were intended for conventional artillery rockets.
White House officials this fall accused Iraq of trying to import the tubes to build a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Several U.S. scientists questioned the claim, however, asserting that the tubes were the wrong dimensions for centrifuges.

Iraq's nuclear weapons program was essentially destroyed or dismantled by the time weapons inspectors left in 1998, according to Intl Atomic Energy Agency. But U.S. & British intelligence reported in Oct. 2002 that Hussein's regime secretly continued and even accelerated its effort to build a nuclear bomb since then.
Sr Iraqi official in Baghdad last weekend admitted for the first time what U.S. & U.N. officials concluded years ago: that Iraq was only 6 months or so from assembling a workable nuclear device when Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. The attack led to the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and subsequent U.N. effort to disarm Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction.

Listings of production & other weapons sites in the Iraqi dossier are proving useful to U.N. inspectors. Newly reinforced teams of inspectors visited 6 suspect sites Wednesday, the most in a day since inspections began 2 weeks ago. One group visited the Karama factory in Baghdad for missile & tank parts. The factory was built in 1999 and is part of Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission, but Iraqi officials insisted that nothing illegal was being done there.
"We make precision parts for Al-Samoud missiles," dir. Brig. Kamel Saeed told reporters who toured the site after the U.N. team left. The 60 ft rocket has a maximum range of 95 miles, which is permitted under the Gulf War cease-fire terms.

Inspectors' spokesman Hiro Ueki said in a statement that Iraq incl the site in a declaration it submitted 10.1.02 in Vienna. That declaration focused on factories & facilities that used so-called dual-use materials or parts that might have military applications.
Another weapons facility at the site was bombed by U.S. warplanes in late 1998, Saeed said. The U.N. experts checked machines previously tagged by arms teams at the destroyed facility. "They checked & found everything is OK. There were no provocations but questions, and we answered them," Saeed added. U.N. officials declined to characterize the visit.

Iraq: 4 dead after no-fly zone attack
2.4.02   CNN

Iraq: 311 killed in US, UK raids since 1998
8.28.00   Reuters

Between the attack Dec.r 1998 & the present, total of 18,607 sorties by raiding US & British warplanes in south Iraq killed 311 citizens & wounded 927.

Turkey admits Iraqi air raid, probes casualty claims
Ankara said military operations started only after measures were taken to prevent any harm to civilians in the Kurdish-held enclave
8.18.18   AFP

ANKARA   Turkey admitted Friday that it launched an operation against Turkish Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and said it was investigating claims by Iraqi factions in the area that civilians were killed in the strike. "Turkey carries out operations in northern Iraq from time to time as part of the combat against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)," Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz said. Dirioz said such military operations started only after measures were taken to prevent any harm to civilians in the Kurdish-held enclave. "In a similar operation Aug.15, necessary measures were taken once again to ensure civilian population would not be harmed," Dirioz said.

Iraq, Russia win sanctions battle
7.4.01   AP

After a day of wrangling over a reference to the U.S.-British plan in the resolution, which Russia opposed, the council voted unanimously Tuesday night on 5 month extension of the oil-for-food program. The vote came less than 6 hours before the current phase of the program was set to expire. To protest the proposed sanctions overhaul, Iraq halted its oil exports June 4. Even before the council vote Tuesday, the Iraqi military's Al-Qadissya newspaper called the extension "a victory for Iraq's rights.'' But Iraqi U.N. Amb. Mohammed al-Douri declined to say Tuesday night whether Baghdad will reopen its oil taps. He said the new resolution's mention of an earlier resolution that referred to the U.S.-British plan, "is not acceptable in principle.''
Nonetheless, Iraq appeared likely to resume oil exports soon. While Iraq sounded triumphant, Russia's U.N. Amb. Sergey Lavrov said, "I don't believe it was a victory for anybody except for the humanitarian program continuation.'' British & Americans would not concede defeat. "The real losers here are the Iraqi people,'' said acting U.S. Amb. James Cunningham. "Revisions we proposed facilitate trade & accelerate commerce and they would improve the lot of Iraq's people.''

He said London & Washington will use coming months to press ahead with their plan and try to sway Russia. "We have made considerable progress and come too close to agreement to concede the field to Baghdad,'' Cunningham said. "We've won a lot of the battles in this process. We haven't yet won the war. But we're going to continue to go forward.'' Russia isn't giving up, either. Lavrov said Moscow's rival resolution to hasten end to Iraqi sanctions remains on the council table. The Russian resolution would suspend sanctions on civilian goods once U.N. weapons inspectors certify that a long-term program to monitor Iraq's weapons programs is fully deployed.
"We expect council members to come back to it as soon as they are ready,'' he said, stressing Russia believes any new Iraq policy must include "very specific criteria on suspending and lifting sanctions'' in conjunction with resumption of U.N. weapons monitoring.

Under council resolutions, sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify Iraq dismantled weapons of mass destruction & long-range missiles. Weapons inspectors left Iraq ahead of U.S.-British airstrikes in Dec. 1998 and Baghdad has barred their return. Iraqi govt maintains it eliminated its weapons programs and has demanded immediate lifting of sanctions. Britain's U.N. Amb. Jeremy Greenstock said "there might be more credibility'' to Russia's approach if Moscow could persuade the Iraqi govt to accept U.N. inspectors. In the meantime, he said, it was "illogical'' to block humanitarian improvements for the Iraqi people.

Iraq to resume oil sales but delays signing
7.5.01   Reuters

Iraq pushes to break out of isolation
9.23.00   Howard Schneider Dawn LATimes - Wash.Post NewsService

France, Russia want UN aid changes
9.21.00   Nicole Winfield AP

Several countries, incl Russia, France, China & Malaysia, believed to want to delay the payout Kuwait's oil company, which would represent largest award to a corporation since fund's inception. So far, the fund has paid out more than $8 billion. Iraq highly critical of compensation commission, accusing it of unfair practices and asserting that most claims, currently 2.6 million claims for a total of $320 billion, have no legal grounds. Some diplomats & analysts suggested Iraq's accusation last week that Kuwait was stealing its oil designed to put pressure on the commission to defer a decision on the Kuwait Petroleum Corp. claim.
French Amb.Jean-David Levitte Thursday told Security Council enormous payout to Kuwaiti company, at a time when oil companies are benefitting from record high oil prices, was unconscionable at a time when Iraqis are suffering from sanctions. He proposed the council consider reducing money diverted into the compensation account from 30¢ to 20¢ & proceeds used to buy more humanitarian goods, a proposal backed by Russia & Tunisia, Western diplomats said.

Russian flight departs for Baghdad
9.23.00   AP

UN   U.N. Security Council members reached broad agreement Monday to drop for 5 or 6 months revamp of sanctions against Iraq and extend current oil-for-food program without changes, diplomats said.. China's U.N. Amb. Wang Yingfan told reporters "extension was agreeable for every council member but whether it is 5 or 6 months, we will have to consult with other council members." China holds this month's Security Council's presidency. Russia objected to U.S.-British resolution that would ease sanctions on civilian goods but spell out "dual use" supplies that could be utilized for military & civilian purposes. It would also seek to stop smuggling of goods by Iraq, est. at $1 billion a year. Overhaul of sanctions procedures were to be put in the context of the U.N.-humanitarian oil-for-food program, which expires on Tuesday.

U.S. said it had to consult Washington before any final decision, which diplomats said concerned length of the delay. "The British have proposed it; I have to consult Washington about it. We have not made a decision," U.S. rep. James Cunningham told reporters.

  allegation
"Eisenberg set up Soros to launder for bin Laden."   Also critical figure in PERMINDEX, JFK cover-up management firm   ¹ º
"Iraqi diesel is practically stolen from the people of Iraq; Hussein gets almost nothing. U.S. buys it in the oil for food deal at $5-6 per barrel. Diesel & guns are exchanged for opium that comes through from China. Iran is also a part of this exchange. The original network was set up by Meyer Lansky & Aristotle Onasis.