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| I can't even tell which reality is really *real*, man by curst 03/19/2003, 7:20pm PST | ||||
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| Warning: opinion pieces cited herein.
Anyway, I'll kick things off with a Wanniski smear job by some guy on slate.msn.com. I'm undecided about how useful it is by itself. However, he does point out that Pelletiere himself wouldn't argue that Saddam has had NO involvement in chemical attacks, since in this article Pelletiere says this about the Halabja incident: This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target. In a way, this does argue against the idea that Saddam purposefully targetted the Kurds with chemical weapons, since this incident took place in the course of fighting a war. But it definitely makes me wonder where the hell Wanniski is coming from. Heck, why did I even bring up Pelletiere's article at all? In one of the other Wanniski articles the Slate piece linked to, Wanniski very helpfully saves me the trouble of pointing out how he can't keep his claims straight, by highlighting the part where Pelletiere says Iraq and Iran both used chemical weapons, just a few paragraphs after insisting that Saddam was NEVER involved with chemical attacks. OKAY, TOTALLY BAFFLED AND GOING TO CRY HERE. Wanniski is confusing Pelletiere's arguments in an attempt to make them agree with his own. Anyway, now that I'm (safely, IMO) discounting Wanniski, but *not* Pelletiere since there's still a chance he's perfectly reasonable and knows what the hell he's talking about, I decided to look for further links on the Halajba incident. I found this testimony by Christine Gosden, who's pro-Kurd and therefore is probably not terribly objective, but her claim that Saddam did not simply use mustard gas at Halajba is important, as the possibility that Iraq forces used a "cocktail" that included cyanide agents could account for the symptoms the victims exhibited (blue-tinged extremities) that would normally point to death by cyanide. And "death by cyanide" appears to be the basis upon which Pelletiere says that it was Iranian chemical weapons that killed the Kurds at Halajba. Gosden insists that the Iraqi "cocktail" could have caused those symptoms as well, and then goes on to say that the sort of cyanide Iran was using would prove ineffective for killing people out in the open - it'd only work in confined areas. The Human Rights Watch organization have compiled a fair amount of info on the incident. Bonus fun HRW link can be found here... search on 'chemical' and you'll find mentions of chemical attacks. These are supposedly Iraq military documents captured by Kurds, so this (you would THINK) is a pretty damning smoking gun indisputably linking the Iraqi army to chemical attacks. Is this organization more or less credible then Pelletiere? Meh, who knows, but I can't find anything that calls their credibility into question. I suppose you could fabricate these documents if you really tried. I guess I'm really doubtful about what Pelletiere and his crew are saying since they seem to be in this huge fucking vast minority, and I'd have to stretch my imagination quite a bit to believe that the Kurds are making all this shit up. Whereas I never have and still don't find it hard at ALL to believe that Hussein has used chemical attacks. I'm just going the Occam's Razor route here. (I'm trying desperately to find an exact text of Pelletiere's report, and I can't do it, so I'm still not *completely* discounting him since that seems to me like it'd be a pretty important piece of this particular puzzle. All's I'm sayin' is, I've got my doubts and I don't think they're unfounded. Maybe I'll get a chance to look for it later tonight.) |
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