Monday 31 December 2012

War was always the goal (3)

HENRY MAKOW. Ph.D. "The Zionist Roots of the ‘War on Terror'."
"Israel's Policy of Covert Aggression." "Until recently I accepted Israel's self-image as a beleaguered, peace-loving nation in a sea of bloodthirsty Arabs. The idea that this tiny state had imperialist designs seemed ludicrous. But what if, unknown to most people, including Israelis, the world's power elite were using Israel to advance their New World Order? What if Israel's role were to colonize the Middle East, and to become the seat of the World Religion?…  
From the point of view of ‘covert aggression,’ if terrorism didn't exist, Israel would have to create it. Possibly, Israel's security establishment inspired some recent attacks on Israelis. In some instances, the terrorists are described as ‘white.’ Remember the sniper who killed 10 Israeli reservists at a checkpoint? If he were Arab, wouldn't he have struck again? Most Arab terrorism is no doubt authentic. But I wouldn't be surprised if at critical junctures, Israel's ‘security establishment was behind it.’ Israeli commentators lament that Israel is not a democracy. 
They say its security establishment has hijacked the country. One pundit remarked: ‘Israel is not a state with an army, but an army with an affiliated state.’ They also lament that a culture of corruption, brutality and immorality pervades the army… I believe the Illuminati controls Israel's security establishment. The world's wealthiest families have more in common with each other than they do with humanity. From their perspective, we are ‘useless eaters.’ 
In the guise of ‘globalism,’ they plan to increase and consolidate their wealth and power, and reduce everyone else's. The heart of the Illuminati's power is the banking and oil cartels, (Rothschild, Rockefeller) but it includes many interlocking cartels like media, pharmaceuticals, Defence, illegal drugs and prostitution. It operates through the world's intelligence agencies, and groups like the Council on Foreign Relations, which grooms all US leaders.  
Esoterically, the Illuminati is a secret society within another secret society, the Freemasons… Americans have been recruited to do the grunt work of subjugating Islam. This is not the first time the Illuminati has used the US in this fashion. America was embroiled in World War One to free a million British soldiers to conquer Palestine for the Zionists. 
In the Second World War, the US saved Communist Russia's bacon. Both Communism and Zionism are creations and instruments of the central bankers…  
From childhood Jews are taught that they are disliked for no rational reason and Israel is insurance against another holocaust. This attitude dehumanizes their opponents and obviates the need for genuine self-criticism. Often, the question is not, is something true or false? Right or wrong? But, ‘Is it good for the Jews?’ 
Traumatizing people and convincing them that irrational fiends threaten their survival is an effective form of mind control. Such people will throw morality and reason to the wind and, if necessary, become savage, mindless killers themselves. They are easily exploited by forces that may not be Jewish at all, that may be anti Semitic, and plot their destruction.  
Now, the Illuminati is using the same tactic on Americans. The Mossad's fingerprints are all over 9-11. Apparently, Israel's Zim Container Lines moved their 200-man office out of the WTC the week before and no Israelis died in the attack. Seven of the supposed Arab ‘hijackers’ seem to be alive… If Osama bin Laden didn't exist, the United States and Britain would have created him.  
Osama may be genuine but there is evidence that he has received money from (the British MI-6 as recently as 1996.) According to the French daily Le Figaro, Ben Laden met with the CIA station chief in Dubai) in July 2001. He serves the purpose of those inciting a bogus 'clash of civilizations.'  
In the domestic sphere, the persecution of Jews has become a cultural paradigm. Lately, women and gays are the Jews, taught they're oppressed by heterosexuality, and homosexuality is normal. Millions of lives are being ruined.  
The Illuminati's hidden agenda is to destroy society's immune system (its ability to resist totalitarianism) by attacking its red blood cell, the nuclear family. In conclusion, ‘covert aggression’ is the primary means by which the Illuminati enacts its long-term plan. Americans have been incited to become oppressors by a phoney Muslim threat. Unaware of what's done in their name, Americans are now like Jews asking, ‘Why do they hate us?’… 
If the US gets bogged down with heavy casualties on both sides, Americans are going to blame big oil and Zionism for getting them into this mess. Everybody knows that: 1) The only country that fears Iraq's WMD's is Israel; 2) American-Jewish neo-conservatives on the Defence Policy Board (Richard PerlePaul Wolfowitz) planned this war in 1998 and made it Bush Administration policy; 3)  
The purpose of the war is to change the balance of power in the Middle East so Israel can settle the Palestinian issue on its own terms; and 4) Congress trembles in fear before the Israeli Lobby, ‘AIPAC.’… At this perilous juncture in US history, there is no effective opposition because Zionist Jews appear to control both parties.  
The Jewish ‘Anti Defamation League’ considers it a barometer of anti Semitism to say, ‘Jews have too much power.’ But is something anti Semitic if it is true? Anti Semitism is racial prejudice. Zionist power is not a racial prejudice; it is a fact of life. When a special interest group hijacks American foreign policy, it is a patriotic duty to say so.

Stalin banned ‘anti Semitism’ on pain of death. Does Stalin control the USA? Zionists believe Jews must have a national homeland in Israel. But Israel was not established for the well being of the Jewish people. The British elite planted Jews in the Arab world to help colonize it. The elite's hidden agenda was to produce the conditions for a possible Third World War leading to ‘World Government.’ 
This may be unfolding now. Zionist leaders belong to a small interlocking network of people who think they have a divine right to rule the world. This includes members of the British and European aristocracy, and the many multinational corporations related to the Rockefeller and Rothschild cartels. In recent decades, Zionists have succeeded in making support for Zionism synonymous with ‘Jewish.’  
They have made Israel appear to be a vulnerable country facing annihilation in a sea of bloodthirsty Arabs. In fact, Israel has 200-400 nuclear bombs and is one of the most powerful nations on earth. It has evaded many opportunities for a just peace because it's secret agenda is to dominate the region. Israel keeps this quiet because most Jews, including Israelis, did not sign on for that. I am an assimilated Canadian Jew who lived in Israel in 1972-73 and used to be a Zionist. 
I no longer believe the Jewish people need a national home. I do not believe Palestine belongs to the Jews just because God gave it to us in the Bible. After all, the Old Testament is a Jewish document. Who would you expect God to promise it to? In the Koran, He could have promised it to the Muslims. Most Zionists don't even believe in God. I do not believe a universal spirit of Love would favour the Jews over anyone else. In this matter, I subscribe to the injunction ‘Thou Shall Not Steal’…  
Israel is the illegitimate child of part of the world's elite. But illegitimate children also have a right to live. I support Israeli statehood within the 1967 boundaries, with generous restitution to the Palestinians. Unfortunately, I doubt if this will satisfy Zionist leaders because I fear their ideology is inherently racist and expansionist. I suspect the Zionist leadership betrayed the Jews of Europe during the Jewish holocaust… Did you know the term ‘Final Solution’ apparently was first used by American Jews to apply to Germans?  
In a 1941 book entitled ‘Germany Must Perish,’ Theodore Kaufman advocated the sterilization of all Germans. (pp.82-89). The American Jewish Committee endorsed this call for genocide. Needless to say, it enraged the Nazis. I suspect that the Jewish holocaust took place partly to justify the state of Israel. World War Two may have been fought between two perverse visions of racial supremacy… Zionists and their allies largely controlled the governments of USSR, USA and England.  
I suspect Jewish leaders use anti Semitism to control and exploit the Jewish masses. Jews are taught to see themselves as a vulnerable minority in constant fear of annihilation. This enforces social cohesion, outlaws genuine self-criticism and, of course, commands generous donations and support.  
 In fact, Zionist leaders are an important part of the elite cabal that is tightening its domination of the world. This is largely done through control of mass media and government. Obviously many non-Jews are involved. But, as long as Jews do not disown Zionist expansion and the New World Order, their role will create resentment."
Henry Makow’s website may be viewed at www.savethemales.ca

ISRAEL SHAHAKProfessor emeritus at the Hebrew University. Chairperson of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. He immigrated to Israel after internment during WWII at the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, served in the Israeli army and became a Professor of Chemistry. ('Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years,' 1994)
"Jewish schoolchildren in Israel ... are taught that it is applicable to the entire extent of either the State of Israel or, after 1967, to what is referred to as the Land of Israel. According to this ideology, the land which has been 'redeemed' is the land which has passed from non-Jewish to Jewish ownership...  
The logical conclusion of such an ideology is the expulsion, called 'transfer' of all non-Jews from the area of land which has to be 'redeemed.' ... A number of discrepant versions of Biblical borders of the Land of Israel, which rabbinical authorities interpet as ideally belonging to the Jewish state, are in circulation ... in the south, all of Sinai and a part of northern Egypt up to the environs of Cairo; in the east, all of Jordan and a large chunk of Saudi Arabia, all of Kuwait and a part of Iraq south of the Euphrates; in the north, all of Lebanon and all of Syria together with a huge part of Turkey and in the west, Cyprus." (pp. 7 and 9.)
"A number of discrepant versions of Biblical borders of the Land of Israel, which rabbinical authorities interpret as ideally belonging to the Jewish state, are in circulation. The most far-reaching among them include the following areas within these borders: in the south, all of Sinai and a part of northern Egypt up to the environs of Cairo; in the east, all of Jordan and a large chunk of Saudi Arabia, all of Kuwait and a part of Iraq south of the Euphrates; in the north, all of Lebanon and all of Syria together with a huge part of Turkey; and in the west, Cyprus." (p. 9)
KATHLEEN & BILL CHRISTISON. "CounterPunch." 13th December 2002. http://www.counterpunch.org/christison1213.html "A Rose By Another Other Name: The Bush Administration's Dual Loyalties."
"The suggestion that the war with Iraq is being planned at Israel's behest, or at the instigation of policymakers whose main motivation is trying to create a secure environment for Israel, is strong. Many Israeli analysts believe this. The Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar recently observed frankly in a ‘Ha'aretz’ column that PerleFeith, and their fellow strategists 'are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments and Israeli interests.' 
The suggestion of dual loyalties is not a verboten subject in the Israeli press, as it is in the United States. Peace activist Uri Avnery, who knows Israeli Prime Minister Sharon well, has written that Sharon has long planned grandiose schemes for restructuring the Middle East and that 'the winds blowing now in Washington remind me of Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their ideas from him. But the style is the same'."
MARTIN VAN CREVELD. Professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force. The Palestinians should all be deported. The people who strive for this are waiting only for the right man and the right time. 
Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 per cent, and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent… I think it's quite possible that he (Sharon) wants to do that. He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed." ('IAP News.' 1st February, 2003. http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=491
Asked if he was worried about Israel becoming a rogue state if it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians, Creveld quoted former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan who said:
"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother… Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that this will happen before Israel goes under." (Ibid.) 
"The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades… Israeli military experts estimate that such a war could be over in just eight days. If the Arab states do not intervene, it will end with the Palestinians expelled and Jordan in ruins. If they do intervene, the result will be the same, with the main Arab armies destroyed. ... Israel would stand triumphant, as it did in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973." ('Daily Telegraph.' April 28th 2002. 'Warning: Sharon's plan is to drive Palestinians across the Jordan')
DAILY TELEGRAPH. April 28th 2002.
"The leading Israeli historian Martin van Creveld predicts that a US attack on Iraq or a terrorist strike at home could trigger a massive mobilisation to clear the occupied territories of their two million Arabs. Two years ago, less than eight per cent of those who took part in a Gallup poll among Jewish Israelis said they were in favour of what is euphemistically called ‘transfer’ that is, the expulsion of perhaps two million Palestinians across the River Jordan. This month that figure reached 44 per cent."
TOM SEGEV. Israeli historian. "One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate," pp. 404-405. 2000.
"In practice, the Zionistists began executing a mini-transfer from the time they began purchasing the land and evacuating the Arab tenants… 
‘Disappearing’ the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream, and was also a necessary condition of its existence ... With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability of forced transfer, or its morality.' However, the Zionist leaders learned not to publicly proclaim their mass expulsion intent because 'this would cause the Zionists to lose sympathy."
ILLAN PAPPE. Jewish Israeli revisionist historian. "Palestine: 'Transfer' or Apartheid,' by Jacob A. Mundy. "Eat The State." November 20th 2002. http://eatthestate.org/07-06/PalestineTransferApartheid.htm
"You can see this new assertion talked about in Israel: the discourse of transfer and expulsion which had been employed by the extreme Right, is now the bon ton of the center."
BENNY MORRIS. Israeli historian. "War on Iraq - Conceived In Israel," by Stephen J. Sniegoski. 19th February 2003. http://www.rense.com/general34/liar.htm
"This land is so small that there isn't room for two peoples. In fifty or a hundred years, there will only be one state between the sea and the Jordan. That state must be Israel."
TIKVAH HONIG-PARNASS. "Between the Lines." July, 2001.
http://desip.igc.org/SharonRoutsBush.html
"One big war with transfer at its end - this is the plan of the hawks who indeed almost reached the moment of its implementation."
RONALD BLEIER. "Sharon Routs Bush: Palestinians now vulnerable to expulsion." August, 2001. http://desip.igc.org/SharonRoutsBush.html
"It is only in the current political climate that such expulsion (of the Palestinians from Israel) plans cannot be put into operation. As hot as the political climate is at the moment, clearly the time is not yet ripe for drastic action. However, if the temperature were raised even higher, actions inconceivable at present might be possible."
MID-EAST REALITIES. September 22nd 2002. http://www.middleeast.org/premium/read.cgi?category=Magazine&num=752&month=9&year=2002&function=text.

A document signed by 95 Israeli Academics.
"We are deeply worried by indications that the 'fog of war' could be exploited by the Israeli government to commit further crimes against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing. The Israeli ruling coalition includes parties that promote 'transfer' of the Palestinian population as a solution to what they call 'the demographic problem'.  
Politicians are regularly quoted in the media as suggesting forcible expulsion, most recently MK’s Michael Kleiner and Benny Elon, as reported on ‘Yediot Ahronot’ website on September 19, 2002.  
In a recent interview in ‘Ha'aretz,’ Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon described the Palestinians as a 'cancerous manifestation' and equated the military actions in the Occupied Territories with 'chemotherapy', suggesting that more radical 'treatment' may be necessary. Prime Minister Sharon has backed this 'assessment of reality'. Escalating racist demagoguery concerning the Palestinian citizens of Israel may indicate the scope of the crimes that are possibly being contemplated."
YEHOSHAFAT HARKABI. "Israel's Fateful Hour," pp. 57-58. 1988.
"The Israeli intention was to impose a Pax Israelica on the Middle East, to dominate the Arab countries and treat them harshly… The failed Israeli attempt to impose a new order in the weakest Arab state, Lebanon, will disabuse people of similar ambitions in other territories." 
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. 9th December, 2002. "Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion."

ROBERT KAPLAN. US neo-conservative. "Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos." 2002. 
"The more successful our foreign policy, the more leverage America will have in the world. Thus, the more likely that future historians will look back on the twenty-first century United States as an empire as well as a republic, however different from that of Rome and every other empire throughout history.  
For as the decades and the centuries march on, and the United States has had a hundred presidents, or 150 even, instead of forty-three, and they appear in long lists like the rulers of bygone empires - Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman - the comparison with antiquity may grow rather than diminish. Rome, in particular, is a model for hegemonic power, using various means to encourage a modicum of order in a disorderly world."
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU. Prime minister of Israel.
"After an interlude of several years in which the vigil against terrorism was relaxed, new forces of domestic and international terror have emerged. Chief among them are the various strains of militant Islam, which likewise see their ultimate destiny as leading to a final confrontation with the Great Satan, the United States." (Prelude. "Fighting Terrorism." 1995) 
When asked what the World Trade Centre attack would do for US-Israeli relations, Netanyahu responded:
"We must build a coalition against terror today, when our power is unmatched, because tomorrow it could be matched. It's times to take on militant Islamic regimes with a great deal of strength. We should crush the terrorist infrastructure that threatens the entire free world."
Netanyahu predicted that yesterday would be a turning point in the history of the United States, similar to Pearl Harbor. He called upon the United States to lead the effort against 'the Bin Ladens, Arafats, and Saddam Husseins of the world." (News conference, Jerusalem's King David Hotel. 11th September 2001)

"It's very good… Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy." Netanyahu stated that the attack would: "… strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror." ('War on Iraq - Conceived In Israel,' by Stephen J. Sniegoski. 19th February, 2003)

http://www.rense.com/general34/liar.htm)
"The way to win this war is to be very clear on the principle and to build a coalition around the principle not the other way around, that is, define the mission as eradicating terrorism everywhere and terrorism in one part of the world emboldens terrorists everywhere.  
I think the car bombs that have exploded in Israel that Arafat has perfected has been the same inspiration for the car, the plane bomb that struck the twin towers. Go after terrorism everywhere, don't legitimise it in any way, whatever the conflict, whatever the grievances, terrorism is out and anybody who harbours terrorism, like Arafat, cannot be given any legitimacy.  
What we're facing today, what you saw in America is a will by this militancy to destroy America and bring back what they view in their twisted fantasies, the resurgence of Islam, they will attack America again and again and again and in fact they hate America, they hate America not because of Israel, they hate Israel because they see it as an outpost of America so even if Israel didn't exist Bin Laden would attack again and again and again." (16th September 2001)
EHUD BARAK. Former Prime Minister of Israel. "Jerusalem Post." September 12th 2001.
"The leadership of the world should be able to take action. It is time for action. The world is not going to be the same place as before."
ARIEL SHARON. Prime Minister of Israel.
"There are things we will tell the public about, there are things we will deny and there are things that will remain hidden forever." (At a meeting with the Yesha Council of Settlements in May 2001) 
Sharon and Simon Perez, Israel's foreign minister, were discussing the Israeli government's actions against the Palestinians. Perez was arguing that the Israelis should at least maintain the pretense of seeking an end to the violence in order to keep the Americans happy. Sharon turned to Perez shouting:
"Every time we do something, you warn me that America will do this or America will do that. I will tell you something very clearly: don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." (Debate in the Knesset. 3rd October 2001. Jerusalem radio station "Kol Yisrae.") 
"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial." ("BBC." 25th March 2001) 
"We first have to give the Palestinians a very heavy blow, before we can talk peace." (The Knesset. "First Channel" TV news. 4th March 2002) 
"I talked about these things with Vladimir Putin a few days ago and I have been to Washington and one of the things I talked about was what will be later, if Iraq is going to be disarmed. One of the things I mentioned is that the free world should take all the necessary steps to prevent irresponsible countries from having weapons of mass destruction: Iran, Iraq of course, and Libya is working on a nuclear weapon…  
Iran is a centre of world terror and Iran makes every effort to possess weapons of mass destruction on the one hand and ballistic missiles… That is a danger to the Middle East, to Israel and a danger to Europe." ('The Times,' 5th November 2002) 
"The only good Arab is a dead Arab." (http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/newlabour.htm) 
Sharon referred to the attack on the World Trade Centre as an assault on 'our common values… and added:
"I believe together we can defeat these forces of evil.' ("New York Times," p. A22. September 12th 2001)
  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/international/12ISRA.html)
"Terrorism will be defeated. Democracies will win this war… Under the courageous leadership of President Bush, we will win this struggle against terror. Democracies will fight against terror and we will win." ('Jerusalem Post.' 2nd December 2001. At .Ground Zero., With New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and a group of firemen and police officers."
THE TIMES. November 5th 2002.
 "Attack Iran the day Iraq war ends, demands Israel." "Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has called on the international community to target Iran as soon as the imminent conflict with Iraq is complete… Sharon insisted that Tehran, one of the, ‘axis of evil,’ powers identified by President Bush, should be put under pressure, ‘the day after,’ action against Baghdad ends because of its role as a, ‘centre of world terror.’  
He also issued his clearest warning yet that Israel would strike back if attacked by Iraqi chemical or biological weapons, no matter how much Washington sought to keep its controversial Middle Eastern ally out of any war in Iraq…  
He asserted that while Washington was inevitably focusing on Saddam Hussein… the White House shared his concern that Iran was also seeking weapons of mass destruction, and developing missiles capable of striking Israel and even Europe."
ERIC MARGOLIS. "Toronto Sun." 27th May 2001.
"In North America, Palestinians are blamed by the usually pro-Israel media and politicians for the current wave of violence and terrorism. But here in Europe, and around the world, there is a rising wave of anger and condemnation against Israel's repression in the Occupied Territories. Only the United States stands behind Israel, and less so every day... 
Senior EU officials charge Israel with violating the Geneva convention and international human rights laws ... 
Ariel Sharon appears increasingly brutal and irrational, almost as much a menace to Israelis as he is to Palestinians."
ARI SHAVIT. Israeli journalist. "Ha'aretz." Israeli newspaper. Reprinted in the "New York Times." May 27th 1996.
"We believe with absolute certitude that now, with the White House and Senate in our hands along with the Pentagon and the ‘New York Times,’ the lives [of Arabs] do not count as much as our own. Their blood does not count as much as our blood. We believe with absolute certitude that now, when we have AIPAC [US/Israel lobby] and Bronfman and the Anti-Defamation League, we truly have the right to tell 400,000 people that in eight hours they must flee from their homes. And that we have the right to rain bombs on their villages and towns and populated areas. That we have the right to kill without any guilt." 
These are not Shavit’s thoughts. He is decribing the mindset of the Sharon crowd.

WALL STREET JOURNAL. 29th May, 1992.
"Some 7,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza (mostly American immigrants) take up 40% of the land, with 1.3 million Palestinians crammed into the rest."
COUNTERPUNCHhttp://www.iraqwar.org/
"Palestinians use 37.5 cubic metres of water per person per year. Israelis use 235 cubic meters and Israeli settlers in the occupied territories use 600."
CHRIS HEDGES. Head of the Middle East bureau of the "New York Times." Gaza, Palestine. "Calgary Sun." http://www.iraqwar.org/
"Israeli soldiers armed with loudspeakers cursed the inhabitants of one Palestinian refugee camp, knowing children and teens would emerge to ineffectually throw stones. The Israeli soldiers then gunned down the youths with live bullets… I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."
NEW YORK TIMES. 16th April, 2002.
"A systematic effort by the Israeli Army to strip institutions of the Palestinian 'Aughority of as much data as possible... they are destroying all the records, all the archives, all the files, of the Palestinian Aughority, said Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian ministr of information... This is an administavive massacre, and will lead to chaos... all payroll data for the Palestinian Suthority seemed to be gone."
MARTIN PERETZ. Ex-Havard Professor and speech writer for Vice president Al Gore. Editor-in-Chief and owner of the "New Republic" newspaper. Member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The Institute was created in 1985 by Martin Indyk, who was later to become a senior State Department official and advisor to Bill Clinton. Draft dodger during the Vietnam War.
"I will not publish anything in the magazine that is anti-Israel."  
"Much of what you have read about the war in Lebanon, and even more of what you have seen and heard on television, is simply not true."
TODD KLIMAN. "Capital Style." September, 1998. "The Opinion Minions." Among the most important Harvard keys to a career in Washington DC political journalism are the good offices of Martin Peretz, a 1960s-era professor and tutor of American vice-president Al Gore. Peretz is the owner of the, "New Republic," a prominent journal he and his wife bought years ago with her inherited Singer Sewing Machine fortune.
"For more than a quarter of a century Marty Peretz's undergraduate seminar in social theory at Harvard has functioned as a kind of Future Pundits of America clubhouse." The New Republic's "Jewish-consciousness is more than palpable. It's pervasive...  
Proof of the New Republic's Jewishness is not merely to be found in its unwavering support of Israel, as many have noted. It's also seen in its brand of inquiry, its willfully contrarian approach to so many issues of the day."
JEWISH CHRONICLE. 4th October, 1996.
http://www.zundelsite.org/english/zgrams/zg1996/zg9610/961010.html
"A Labour Government will act to make Holocaust denial a criminal offence, Opposition leaders pledged this week. The announcement, made at the party's Blackpool conference, was the culmination of a lengthy campaign by Jewish groups, including the Board of Deputies, the Holocaust Education Trust and Poale Zion. Shadow Home Secretary Jack Straw confirmed that the motion committing a Labour government to such a law, due to be discussed yesterday ,had the backing of the entire leadership. The Blackpool conference continued the party's courting of the Jewish community."
ZUNDELSITE. October 10th 1996.
http://www.zundelsite.org/english/zgrams/zg1996/zg9610/961010.html
"Mr. Straw defined the promised legislation as a ‘much-needed measure.’ This legislation would reverse the Tory government's policy not to criminalize questioning the Holocaust."
ROBIN COOK. Shadow Foreign Secretary. "Labour Friends of Israel" fringe meeting. The Labour Party's Blackpool conference. 1996. "Jewish Chronicle." 4th October, 1996.
"For two years, there has been a debate over whether to make it a crime to deny the Holocaust. Now Jack Straw has made it clear that we will. The way to make sure it never happens again is to make sure we never forget it."
TONY BLAIR.
"The Jewish community's principles are… precisely those things for which Labour stands today… The renewal of our ties with the communities is one of the best things that has happened to us." (Labour Party Conference, Blackpool, 1996)
IVAN LEWIS. MP for Bury, South. Leading light in the "Labour Friends of Israel." House of Commons, 25th November 1998.
"Israel is not only a democracy, but engaged in an on-going peace process with the Palestinians. Recent weeks have seen progress in that peace process… Israel has been surrounded throughout its history by countries hell bent on its destruction, including the regime in Iraq… It is Saddam Hussein who is responsible for the situation that faces the Iraqi people and for the instability in the middle east."
ALISON SWERSKY. "Totally Jewish." August 9th 2002. http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-news-0326.html
"Political rumours were rife in Westminster this week that discredited former transport secretary Stephen Byers was favourite to take over the chairmanship of the Labour Friends of Israel lobby group. The MP for North Tyneside, dubbed a ‘liar’ by the national press after a series of political bungles and cover ups, resigned from the top ministerial posting after stating he’d become a ‘distraction from what the government is achieving’… 
Byers was unavailable for comment this week, keeping himself out of the public eye since the ‘News of The World’ revealed he had allegedly cheated on his long-term partner with a Labour councillor at a conference in Cardiff. However, many pundits see the potential move by the ex-minister as a return to front line politics as the Labour Friends of Israel is routinely consulted by Tony Blair on Middle East policy.  
The pro-Israel lobby group is also seen by budding backbenchers as a way of climbing the ministerial ranks. Former chairman Jim Murphy, MP for Eastwood, recently resigned from the post after being appointed to whip. And previous incumbent Stephen Twigg MP for Enfield Southgate is now an Education minister. 
 LFI director David Mencer said: ‘MPs on the LFI executive are in the process of selecting a new chairman and it’s in our best interest to ensure that the new chairman of the organisation retains our influence at the highest levels of government.’  
Lord Greville Janner, of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: ‘I will be very happy if Stephen Byers accepts a major position with Labour Friends of Israel and I hope he does. He has always been very pro-Israel and a good friend of the Jewish people.’ Board of Deputies director-general Neville Nagler said: ‘We work very closely with the Labour Friends of Israel and we are happy to work with anyone elected to that position.’  
Zionist Federation president Eric Moonman said: ‘I think he is the best man for the job. He has been a good friend to the community in the past, which goes beyond anything in his own constituency. I also think he is someone that can deliver the goods. He has good contacts and this will be very helpful in these difficult times, especially in terms of media coverage'."
IAN DUNCAN SMITH. Conservative Party leader.
"I was optimistic that the State of Israel, a lighthouse of democracy in a troubled region, would feel a little safer and a little more secure. I wanted very much to celebrate with you the first day of Chanucah, the festival of lights… Tragically, the events of the last few days in Israel remind us that we still have a long way to go before the scourge of terrorism is eradicated.  
Fifteen people killed in Israel by terrorism a week ago last Saturday. Twenty-five dead because of terrorism the day after. Over 230 Israelis killed by suicide bombers and other means since 1994. Hundreds more injured... 
After September 11 many in the West have had to come to terms with terrorists whose utter disregard for human life has led to suicide bombers and the use of anthrax. This is something Israeli citizens contend with every day and every night. What we were forced to accept on September 11, is something that Israel learnt a long time ago. You cannot appease terror. Make no mistake, the individuals who perpetrated the latest atrocity in Israel have no wish to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Israelis…  
They have no desire to improve the life of their fellow citizens. Their sole objective is to destroy Israel and everything she represents, liberal values, pride in the nation state, economic achievement. This truth was so passionately expressed by Binyamin Netanyahu in my talks with him a few weeks ago. Similarly, those who attacked America did not care to change American Foreign Policy towards the Arab world. They did not want to improve the plight of Afghan citizens. 
They wanted to destroy everything America stands for. The bombing of the World Trade Centre was not an attack on America's policy towards Islam. It was an assault on scientific, technological and economic achievement - it was an attempt to destroy democracy, capitalism and the rule of law. 
It is this fanatic hatred of the West and its values that give us a warning that Al Quaeda, Hamas and others will stop at nothing to achieve their aims. Who knows what biological, chemical or nuclear weapons terrorists would unleash if given the opportunity?  
That is why my party has given backing to President Bush's plans for an effective ballistic missile defence shield, for the United States and her allies. Far from holding back on missile defence, the events of September 11 have made it all the more important to press ahead. Our fight against terror must not stop in Afghanistan. The days of safe havens for terrorists are over. No longer can we appease or turn a blind eye to regimes that support terrorism… 
Last week, I visited the United States and met with President Bush and other members of his Administration. I agree with the President when he said after the events in Israel that it was the moment for those who want peace to 'rise up and fight terror'. I am glad that the US Administration has taken action to target the finances of terrorist organisations like Hamas.  
Against this background, surely it is time that our national broadcasters, not just, but including the BBC, stopped describing Hamas and jihad with such euphemisms as radical and militant? Let us call things what they are: They are terrorist organisations. Such fudging of what Hamas or Islamic Jihad are confers some sort of legitimacy on people who are terrorists…  
 Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not interested in peace. They demand nothing less than the destruction of Israel and all that it stands for. The violence and terror they use have become ends in themselves. Israel has the right to defend herself accordingly…  
One of our historians Sir Martin Gilbert, made an astute observation. He said: 'Israel is often the centre of world attention. This is seldom for her achievements, which are considerable, or for the quality of life which she has created, and which is the envy of many nations.’ I agree. This is a sad reflection on the world as it is, not on the world as it should be. This is not just because of fifty-four years of achievement, against all the odds. Nor because of the contribution that Israel has made to science, agriculture, technology, and many other spheres, across the world.  
For me, it is Israel's contribution towards civil society that is the most important. A country, which was founded upon the work of volunteers and philanthropic activity, and has today over 28,000 voluntary and charitable organisations, has much to teach us about public service, responsibility, compassion and duty towards others. It seems to me that these values are steeped in the Jewish tradition.  
All across the world Jewish organisations and others work hard to support Israel, whether it is through philanthropy or by actively sending volunteers to help in Kibbutzim, hospitals or schools. Other organisations like the Conservative Friends of Israel do so much to ensure that Israel's voice is heard in Westminster and Whitehall… 
Where would we be without the social entrepreneurship of those who have done so much to set up successful Jewish schools like the Joy and Stanley Cohen Primary School in Hertsmere? Where would we be without the social entrepreneurship of those behind organisations like Jewish Care that do so much to assist the vulnerable, or like the Jewish Marriage Council, which helps keep families together…  
I said at the beginning that I had wanted to celebrate with you. I believe we still can. The modern miracle that is Israel should be celebrated and encouraged. I am proud that the majority of my Parliamentary party are members of CFI. The level of support which CFI has, shows all too clearly the depths of warmth and feeling that Conservatives have to Israel and all she stands for. CFI has an enviable record of achieving worthy objectives and I congratulate Director Stuart Polak for over ten years of exceptional work.  
I am delighted that Gillian Shepherd who does so much for CFI is now our Party Vice Chairman and is now responsible for selecting our next generation of Parliamentary Candidates." (Speech to the Conservative Friends of Israel. 10th December 2001) 
"Appeasement is not an option… Every democracy has a right to defend itself against such attacks. Israel is no exception. Israel is a part of the front line for democracy against terrorism. It must not stand alone. And Mr Chairman we will not let it stand alone…  
Saddam Hussein is a constant and dangerous threat to… peace. His track record in slaughtering his own people is well known. So too is his wider record in the Middle East, including the invasion of Kuwait. There is no doubt that he is obsessed with building and acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Thanks to Israel, his earlier attempts to develop a nuclear arsenal were prevented…  
As the Prime Minister has said: if Saddam fails to disarm ‘the consequence is that the weapons will be disarmed by force.’ Not 'may be' or 'could be', but 'will be.’ It is this approach that will lead to the disarmament of Iraq. And it is this approach that will lead to greater security for Israel… The world cannot afford to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt. Time is on his side, not ours…  
The Palestinian people have suffered from decades of corruption, extremism, violence and misjudgements. They need real leadership. Leadership which disowns terrorism… Our party supports the Tenet peace plan and the Mitchell proposals. … if there is one section of our society that is in a state of preparedness it is the Jewish community.  
As I have seen in every visit I have made to Jewish organisations across the country, instead of waiting for the State to solve a problem, you get together and try to solve it for yourselves… 
The Community Security Trust does so much to ensure that Jewish people are able to worship in freedom and to combat anti Semitic abuse. The CST has been invaluable in providing information to relevant authorities about individuals and organisations with links to terrorists.  
I pay tribute to the Jewish Community for this initiative and to it's supporters, who I am pleased to see here today… Thank goodness for the CST… we have not yet vanquished terrorism or anti Semitism. We have a long way to go. As well as establishing mechanisms for protecting Jewish people in Israel, through the work of CFI, you ensure that the needs of Israel are heard and represented throughout the Conservative Party.  
I am proud that the Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Gillian Shephard is also the Parliamentary Chairman of CFI. That two thirds of the Conservative Parliamentary party are also members of CFI… Your Excellency, shortly you will return to Israel after giving unstinting service as Israel's Ambassador in Britain. You will know by now who are real friends of Israel." (A speech given before the retiring Israeli Ambassador to the Uk and the Conservative Friends of Israel. 9th December, 2002)
LORD GOLDSMITH. Attorney General. "The Guardian." March 17th 2003. Peter Goldsmith was elected to membership of the American Law Institute in 1997. Tony Blair ennobled him in 1999 and he became Attorney General in 2001 and a Privy Councillor in 2002.
"All of these resolutions were adopted under chapter VII of the UN charter which allows the use of force for the express purpose of restoring international peace and security…  
In resolution 678 the security council authorised force against Iraq, to eject it from Kuwait and to restore peace and security in the area. In resolution 687, which set out the ceasefire conditions after Operation Desert Storm, the security council imposed continuing obligations on Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction in order to restore international peace and security in the area. 
Resolution 687 suspended but did not terminate the authority to use force under resolution 678.  A material breach of resolution 687 revives the authority to use force under resolution 678. In resolution 1441 the security council determined that Iraq has been and remains in material breach of resolution 687, because it has not fully complied with its obligations to disarm under that resolution. 
The security council in resolution 1441 gave Iraq 'a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations' and warned Iraq of the 'serious consequences' if it did not. The security council also decided in resolution 1441 that, if Iraq failed at any time to comply with and co-operate fully in the implementation of resolution 1441, that would constitute a further material breach. It is plain that Iraq has failed so to comply and therefore Iraq was at the time of resolution 1441 and continues to be in material breach. 
Thus, the authority to use force under resolution 678 has revived and so continues today. Resolution 1441 would in terms have provided that a further decision of the security council to sanction force was required if that had been intended. Thus, all that resolution 1441 requires is reporting to and discussion by the security council of Iraq's failures, but not an express further decision to authorise force." 
Peter Goldsmith, who was elected by no one, thus provided Tony Blair with the official seal of approval for his declaration of war upon Iraq.

OFFICIAL ISRAELI MILITARY HANDBOOK. Published by the Central Regional Command of the Israeli Army.
"When our forces come across civilians during war or in hot pursuit in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then, according to the Halakhah, they may and even should be killed... under no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilized... in war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good citizens, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good." 
Halakhah is the legal system of classical Judaism observed by Orthodox Jews.

THE IRAN/IRAQ & GULF WARS SPINTECHhttp://www.iraqwar.org/
"American involvement in the Middle East has, for the most part, consisted of sabotaging one popular movement after another so as to maintain one dictator or another in power. From Iran to Jordan to Algeria, American policy has been hostile to any expression of Middle Eastern democracy.  
Our policy there is defined by hypocrisy. We've condemned Iranian fundamentalism, even gone so far as to support a military suppression of free elections in Algeria, lest fundamentalists gain control there, yet we’re happy supporting the royal fundamentalists of the House of Saud and Sabah in the Persian Gulf, because they do our bidding. Again and again we've set ourselves up as the enemy of the average residents in the Middle East by interfering in their local affairs." 
J. JGOLDBERG. US Journalist. "The Jerusalem Report," p. 26. 11th July 1991.
"Regarded just weeks ago as a paranoid delusion, the theory of a secret 1980 deal between the Reagan-for-President campaign and revolutionary Iran is now official Senate business ... 
Conservative versions of the theory allege that Israeli officials cooperated with the Reagan campaign in what amounted to a bid to prolong detention of US hostages [in Iran] to tilt the 1980 election away from incumbent Jimmy Carter... The current flap seems to have Israeli fingerprints all over it." 
JIMMY CARTER. US President. "The Carter Doctrine." January, 1980. "Mother Jones." March/April, 2003. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/10/ma_273_01.html "Let our position be absolutely clear. An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." 

COLONEL WALTER P . LANG. Senior Defense intelligence officer at the time of the Iran-Iraq War. "New York Times." August, 2002. "Counter Punch." October 10th 2002. D.I.A. and C.I.A. officials: "… were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose… The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern."

YOSEF GOELL. "The Jerusalem Post." October 21st 2002.
"In the countdown to the American attack on Iraq, Israel's premier now has the right to insist that the US president release Jonathan Pollard. It was stupid of Israel to plant a spy in the heart of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering agency of its major -- and possibly only, ally, the US. Specifically, it was stupid and irresponsible of Israel's three top leaders at that time, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, foreign minister Shimon Peres, who rotated between the two posts, and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin, to authorize their underlings to plant Pollard as a spy in Washington.
Did those three not think Pollard would be apprehended sooner or later? Did they never contemplate what it would mean for Israel's relations with the US? In the event, Israel got off relatively easily. Our three top leaders wriggled out of their responsibility; none of them resigned or accepted personal responsibility for that near-calamitous failure. Pollard was the only one who paid the price,- which is the way it usually is in the murky arena of espionage… 
I believe… that the time has now come for an Israeli prime minister to insist forcefully to a US president that Pollard be released… in this threatening new situation an Israeli leader should at least demand that Bush do something to reassure Israeli public opinion, for example, by a gesture like freeing Pollard. 
The irony of the Iraqi situation in this connection should not be lost. What Pollard was actually doing was obtaining critical satellite and electronic intelligence on Iraq and its destructive capabilities against Israel, intelligence the Americans refused to share with us. That was at a time when Washington was cozying up to Saddam Hussein, and it lasted well up to his invasion of Kuwait in 1990."
TED KOPPEL.
"In 1982, the United States gave the world a clear signal that relations with Iraq were improving. It dropped Iraq from its list of states that support terrorism… It wasn't just a tilt toward Iraq, it was an opening of the floodgates. At times, U.S. laws were violated… 
The sheer quantity of technology, weapons and money that were transferred to Iraq over roughly the same period dwarfs anything that went to Iran. Remember, official U.S. policy was that no help should go to either side… the Atlanta branch of an Italian bank, BNL, was able to funnel billions, some of it in U.S. credits, to Iraq's military procurement network. The U.S. government knew… 
Sophisticated military technology was illegally transferred from a major U.S. company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to South Africa and Chile and, from there, on to Iraq. The Iraqi-born designer of a chemical weapons plant in Libya set up shop in Florida, producing and then shipping to Iraq chemical weapon components. 
The CIA, the FBI and other federal agencies were made aware of the operation and did nothing to prevent it. During the 1980s and into the '90s, senior officials of both the Reagan and Bush administrations encouraged the privatization of foreign policy, certainly towards Iran and Iraq… they found ways of encouraging foreign governments to do what our laws prohibited. They knew… that U.S. companies were collaborating with foreign arms merchants in the illegal transfer of American technology that helped Saddam Hussein build his formidable arsenal." ('Nightline.' 13th September 1991)
SENATE COMMITTEE REPORTS. "US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War." Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration. May 25th 1994. October 7th 1994. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/IraqHypocrisy_WBlum.html
"From 1985 through 1989, biological materials were exported to Iraq by private American suppliers pursuant to application and licensing by the US Department of Commerce. Amongst these materials were: "Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax. Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin. Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord and heart.  
Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs. Clotsridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness. Clostridium tetani, highly toxigenic. Escherichia Coli (E.Coli); genetic materials; human and bacterial DNA… These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction…  
It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program." These exports continued to at least November 28, 1989 despite the fact that Iraq had been reported to be engaging in chemical warfare and possibly biological warfare against Iranians, Kurds, and Shiites since the early 80s.  
On August 18th 2002, a headline in the, "New York Times," online stated: "Officers Say US Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas." The story told its readers that senior military officers had revealed that the Reagan administration had provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance in waging decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The assistance was given at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraq had already employed chemical weapons and would likely continue to do so."
WILLIAM BLUM . "The United States vs. Iraq: A Study in Hypocrisy." February 9th 1998. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/IraqHypocrisy_WBlum.html
"It's been a leading, driving doctrine of US foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price. Indeed, there is evidence that Washington encouraged Iraq to attack Iran and ignite the war in the first place. This policy, as well as financial considerations, were likely the motivating forces behind providing Iraq with the biological materials."
SADDAM HUSSEIN. 1985 meeting with US State Department officials. "Los Angeles Times," February 10th 1991.
"You Americans, you treat the Third World in the way an Iraqi peasant treats his new bride. Three days of honeymoon, and then it’s off to the fields." 
JONATHAN POLLARD. US traitor. Convicted of spying for Israel against the US. "The Wall Street Journal." Letter to his Rabbi, February 15th 1991
"Dear Rabbi, My name is Jonathan Pollard and I am currently serving a life sentence due to my activities on behalf of Israel… I do not believe that the draconian sentence that was meted out to me was in any way commensurate with the crime which I committed. Nowhere in my indictment... was I ever described as a ‘traitor,’ which is hardly a surprise given the fact that the operation with which I was associated actually served to strengthen America's long-term security interests in the Middle East… 
Perhaps one of the worst things that the Reagan administration did to Israel during the course of my trial was that it purposely distorted the nature of my activities in such a way as to leave the impression that Israel had somehow become a threat to the national security of this country…  
The problem ... lay in the fact that many of the photos that I turned over to the Israelis were of a number of Iraqi chemical weapons manufacturing plants which the government did not want to admit existed. Why? Well, if no one knew about these facilities the State and Defense Departments would have been spared the embarrassing task of confronting Iraq over its violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which banned the use of chemical weapons in war. 
You have to remember... that at the time of my sentencing, the massacre of Kurdish civilians in Halabja had not yet occurred, and what little concern was being voiced over Iraq's apparent use of poison gas was largely ignored by the administration which did not want to anger the Arab world by criticizing the use of such barbaric weapons against Iran.  
The photos I gave Israel, though… would have jeopardized the administration's policy of callous indifference to this issue, in that they constituted hard, irrefutable proof that Iraq was indeed engaged in the production and wide scale use of chemical weapons. What the administration was really concerned about was being placed in a position where it would have to admit that it had tacitly condoned the creation of an Iraqi chemical weapons manufacturing capability.  
Once the atrocity of Halabja had occurred though, the White House was placed in a rather awkward position. On the one hand the US Intelligence community did not want to be accused of having failed to keep an eye on Iraq's burgeoning chemical weapons arsenal. Then again, the CIA... could not very well confirm the existence of the Iraqi poison gas plants without running the risk of compromising the Reagan administration's policy towards these facilities.  
After a few days of ‘soul searching,’ the State Department finally admitted that the US had intercepted some Iraqi Intelligence communications which indicated that lethal gas had, in fact, been used against unarmed Kurdish civilians. The Iranians had astutely outmaneuvered them, though, and the issue had to be ‘contained’ before it caused a rift in US - Arab relations…  
Thus in attempt to recapture the moral ‘high ground,’ so to speak, from Iran, the White House evidently decided that it would be better for the US to be seen as leading the public denunciation of Iraq rather than the Ayatollah Khomeini. As it was though, the Administration still managed to salvage its standing in the Arab world by preventing Congress from imposing any punitive sanctions against Iraq. In essence, then, what I did by passing satellite photos of the Iraqi poison gas plants to Israel, was to endanger the Reagan Administration's pro-Saudi political agenda…  
What the Israelis would actually have considered was a preventative attack on the Iraqi chemical factories before they had become fully operational… If the Reagan administration felt justified in its desire to eliminate what it perceived to be an impending Libyan chemical threat to our national security, why was it so unwilling to grant Israel the same right of preventative self- defense with regard to Iraq's poison gas manufacturing facilities?… 
What was I supposed to do? Let Israel fend for herself? If you think that is what I should have done, then how can we condemn all those ... who during the Second World War consciously participated in the abandonment of European Jewry? Seriously, Rabbi, what would be the difference between what they did and a decision on my part to have kept silent about the Iraqi poison gas threat to Israel?"
BRENT SCOWCROFT. Lieutenant General in the US Army. CFR member. Chairman of the Presidential Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Former aide to Henry Kissinger and National Security Advisor to George Bush.
"We are moving to a New World Order." (Speech at the United Nations. September, 1990.) "We believe we are creating the beginning of a New World Order coming out of the collapse of the US - Soviet antagonisms." ("Washington Post." May 1991) 
In an interview with CNN at the height of the Gulf War, Scowcroft said that he had doubts about the significance of Mid-East objectives regarding global policy. When asked if that meant he didn't believe in the New World Order, he replied: 
"Oh, I believe in it. But our definition, not theirs." 
"Depleted Uranium is more of a problem than we thought when it was developed. But it was developed according to standards and was thought through very carefully. It turned out perhaps to be wrong." ('Riding The Storm,' Channel 4 documentary, 3rd January, 1996)  
"We must sacrifice our civil liberties.'' (In the immediate aftermath of the September 11th 2001, terrorist attacks.) 
"There is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks… Indeed, Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them." (2002. "AlterNet." "The War Within Washington," by Jim Lobe. August 22nd 2002)
HENRY GONZALEZ. Texas Congressman. "Counter Punch." October 10th 2002. 
"Investigators discovered the involvement of, the giant Italian bank, and many of the very same circles of arms suppliers and policy makers inside the US government who had been active in those roles for years. 
The National Security Council, CIA and other US agencies tacitly approved about $4 billion in unreported loans to Iraq through the Atlanta branch of the giant Italian bank, the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. In this way, Iraq, with the blessing and official approval of the US government, purchased computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods for Iraq's missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. 
Although they denied it at the time, US government officials didn't just know and approve, but some were employees at BNL directly or indirectly. Gonzalez revealed that Brent Scowcroft served as Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates until being appointed as National Security Advisor to President Bush in January, 1989. 
"Until October 4, 1990, Mr. Scowcroft owned stock in approximately 40 US corporations, many of which were doing busies in Iraq." 
The companies that Scowcroft owned stock in 'received more than one out of every eight US export licenses for exports to Iraq. Several of the companies were also clients of Kissinger Associates while Mr. Scowcroft was Vice Chairman of that firm… Many Kissinger Associates clients received US export licenses for exports to Iraq. Several were also the beneficiaries of BNL loans to Iraq.'
ELSON EBOLES. "Counter Punch." October 10th 2002. "The Relevance of Yesterday's US Hypocrisy Today."
"Scowcroft's stock included that in Halliburton Oil, (Dick Cheney a future CEO) also doing business in Iraq at the time, which had also been run by current Vice President Dick Cheney for a time… this year President George Bush major faced suspicion of insider trading in relation to selling his stock in Halliburton.  
Thus, Kissinger Associates helped US companies obtain US export licenses with BNL-finance so Iraq could purchase US weapons and materials for its weapons programs. Many US business-men and officials made handsome profits. This included Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, who was an employee of BNL while BNL was simultaneously a paying client of Kissinger Associates.
Gonzalez reported that Mr. Alan Stoga, a Kissinger Associates executive, met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in June, 1989. Perhaps the most bizarre revelations about the involvement of former US officials concerned a Washington-based enterprise called ‘Global Research’ which played a middleman role in selling uniforms to Iraq. It was run by, none other than Spiro Agnew (Nixon's former VP who resigned to avoid bribery and tax evasion charges), John Mitchell (Nixon's chief of staff and Watergate organizer), and Richard Nixon himself. 
In the mid-1980s, more than a decade after Watergate, Nixon wrote a cozy letter to former dictator and friend Nicolae Ceausescu to close the deal. Global Research, incidentally, swindled the Iraqis, who thought they were getting US-made uniforms for desert conditions. Instead they received, and discarded, the winter uniforms from Romania." 
Keith Fisher, October, 1998: keith@flyingfish.org.uk
"In May, 1908, in what is now known as Iran, William Knox D'Arcy, struck oil. In 1909 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which later changed its name to BP, was founded. In 1914, the British Government became the major shareholder just in time for WWI. Persia, thus, became a battleground for the British, Turkish and Russian armies, despite declaring its neutrality.  
In 1919, Reza Khan seized power and, in 1926, he was crowned Reza Shah Pahlavi. Palavi managed to establish a degree of national independence. The new Shah was a moderniser and he attempted to impose western reforms on an Islamic society. This provoked a religious backlash. The eventual banning of the veil in 1936 mobilised the ayatollahs. The Shah terminated the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's concession in 1932.  
The concession was re-established the following year on terms somewhat more favourable to the Shah. At the outbreak of WWII, Germany was Iran's biggest trading partner Iran and, thus, once again, was caught up in another European war, even though, once again, it had declared its neutrality.  
On the 26th of August, 1941, Iran was invaded simultaneously by Britain from the west and the Soviet Union from the north. Reza Shah abdicated, handing the crown to his son, Mohammad Shah. As soon as the war was over, the Americans and the Russians began competing for oil concessions. The Iranians were prety fed up with all of this and decided to extract their own oil. However, Iran agreed in 1947 to allow the US to provide support for its military and, in 1949, they struck a new deal with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. 
In March 1951, Prime Minister Ali Razmara, who was against the nationalisation of Iranian oil, was assassinated. In April, the AIOC, was forced to leave the country. Muhammad Mossadeq, who had spearheaded the nationalisation of Iran’s oil, became Prime Minister. Economic pressures, exacerbated by a British embargo, caused unrest in the country. Minister of Fuel and Power. 
'In the case of a mineral like oil they are of course morally entitled to a royalty but that morally they are entitled to 50%, or… even more of the profits of enterprises to which they have made no contribution whatever, is bunk, and ought to be shown to be bunk.  
The AIOC began to plan the overthrow of Mossadeq when further negotiations broke down. The British used America's fears of Soviet influence in the region to involve them in the plan. Operation Ajax was drawn up by the AIOC. The coup began with street demonstrations which were organised by MI6 and the CIA. US propaganda described the disturbances as a revolt on the part of the Iranian Communist Party and this undermined Mossadeq's popularity, the Shah, meanwhile, who the US/British cohort wished to re-establish, was presented as a safe pair of hands by the same US propaganda.  
On 19th August 1953, General Fazlollah Zahedi, who had been chosen by Britain and the US as a tame replacement for Mossadeq, put him under house arrest, and declared himself Prime Minister. At the same time this was being done, the Shah was recalled. In London, AIOC shares rose sharply on the Stock Exchange. AIOC changed its name to The British Petroleum Company, and resumed operations in Iran with a forty percent share in an international consortium.  
This state of affairs continued until the fall of the Shah in 1979. Having been recalled the Shah continued with his secular reforms with the help of the SAVAK, the secret police, who ruthlessly put down all opposition. However, in 1963, Ayatollah Khomeini made a speech in which he attacked the corruption of the Shah and his government. Khomeini was forced into exile after this and spent fourteen years in Iraq. The Shah's prime minister, Hassan Ali Mansur, was assassinated in 1965.  
In 1987 the British government finally sold most of its remaining shares in BP. On 1st February 1979, Khomeini returned to Tehran, the Shah was evicted and a revolutionary Islamic government was established. Diplomatic ties with the Shah’s old friends were severed. The recent diplomatic developments turn on oil again, particularly on the opening up to the West of the vast oil and gas reserves of the ex-Soviet republics. 
The issue here is partly one of gaining access to the reserves themselves but mainly of the question of how to transport them out of the region to whoever will pay for them - Western Europe, the US and East Asia. The oil and gas pipelines are the arteries carrying the lifeblood of the wealthy nations.  
During the Soviet era, the republics' fuel production was siphoned north through the Russian pipeline system. Now, the Russians having lost control of this region around the Caspian Sea, the major western oil companies want to siphon this fuel in the other direction. The US, under Israeli pressure, would like new pipelines to be built in such away as to avoid Iranian as well as Russian territory. Everyone wants to be in on this dangerous bonanza. For example, a compromise agreement was reached which involves the construction of two pipelines for oil from Azerbaijan, one going west through Turkey, the other going north through Russia.  
The members of the European Union are less hardline anti-Iranian than the US; Britain has been held back, over the Rushdie Affair, from developing lucrative trade with Iran, while other European countries such as Germany have made significant strides. It is to try to catch up with its neighbours in this regard, but also to follow the EU's more diplomatic strategy with Iran to achieve security over the flow of Caspian oil, that Britain has been making its recent overtures to the Iranian government.  
The fate of Salman Rushdie and of all those currently suffering human rights abuses in Iran (as documented by Amnesty International are being rather forgotten under all these shenanigans. Indeed, Amnesty recently produced a report charging government departments such as the Department of Trade and Industry with undermining Robin Cook's purported ethical stand on foreign policy. It comes as no surprise that it is the interests of BP and Britain's general economic and strategic interests that are now taking priority.  
In 1992, Margaret Thatcher pulled off a very British coup, by giving Azerbaijan a $30 million down payment for the exploitation of its resources: To Azerbaijani officials, a deal with BP was tantamount to a deal with the British government; not only did visiting British officials lobby relentlessly for the company, but for months Britain's diplomatic mission to Azerbaijan had operated out of the BP offices.  
On 21st July 1998, BP announced that it had reached an agreement for a major offshore Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) with the Republic of Azerbaijan… A signing takes place today at 10 Downing Street in the presence of British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair…and BP Chief Executive Sir John Browne. Furthermore, it has been reported that BP are to head a British trip, organised by the Department of Trade and Industry, to a Tehran trade fair in October 1998. 
The signs clearly point towards human rights taking second place to politics, in turn taking second place to global business interests. We have seen that there is a precedence for this kind of cynicism and arrogance in BP's formative years. Perhaps, as BP head, Sir John Browne claimed in a recent speech, this kind of corporate cynicism and arrogance is a thing of the past 45 - there is a danger of seeing conspiracies where there are none. But BP has been exposed as being, at the very least, in a highly compromising position regarding human rights in its Colombian operations.  
Here it appears that the company is currently quite happy to assist the Colombian security forces in violently oppressing the local people, where it suits BP's business agenda. So long as it is done covertly, of course. 46 So, BP's knowing - even active - complicity in the abuse of human rights has been an essential component of its business strategy and continues to be up to this very day. It does seem very much as if BP has overtaken Rushdie. Is this what we want to see, the value of oil against the value of life?  
John Browne said, in his recent speech: 'We have to be commercially successful, so financial performance is an absolute requirement, but we also want to be seen as innovative, responsible and constructive in our dealings… 
We have to be conscious of the way in which business activity has become a lever for other people's policy objectives… It certainly doesn't feel as if we have power in any normal sense of the word. Anything we do in terms of the international relations agenda is not about imposing our views on anyone else, but simply another requirement of doing business successfully, a reflection of the fact that international relations are not a suitable subject for a laissez-faire approach.  
But I do want to stress the limits of the corporate role. Companies have no democratic legitimacy… Being in the oil industry and being British (and also perhaps because we employ so many graduates of Cambridge and Oxford) means we tend not to wear our hearts on our sleeves. We don't express too much emotion. So when people come up to me and say that the position we've taken on climate change makes them proud to say they work for BP, you know something special is happening.
It appears that BP still believes in 'financial performance' as 'an absolute requirement,' an article of faith as fundamentalist as those of any religious extremists if it means giving way on human rights. Let us indeed 'be conscious of the way in which business activity has become a lever for other people's policy objectives.'  
BP has yet to learn to come clean and it looks as if the Rushdie affair, sadly, is set to run for quite some time.  
On 16th October1998, Robin Cook met in 'private' with Rushdie, urging him to keep quiet so as not to upset the delicate diplomacy going on between Britain and Iran.
This was presented as part of a strategy that would avoid antagonising Iran's hardliners, easing pressure on its moderates. But what has happened to the principle of freedom of expression? It seems rather ironic that it has reached the stage where even our own Foreign Minister has taken to censoring Rushdie. One further suspects BP's leverage on 'other people's policy objectives.' 
Will Rushdie ever get round to writing his book? I've always wanted to write about this matter and I always felt the time to write about it was when I knew what the last chapter was. If Britain's foreign policy towards Iran does not mature into something more sophisticated than it has been for the whole of living memory, we could end up paying rather more than we expect for our lust for oil. If governments and business do not play fairly and openly, their neglect and arrogance will return to haunt them.  
When their crude pursuit of economic growth and ever increasing profits (effectively religiously sacrosanct to the devout believer in capitalism) lead then to play dirty, our moralising condemnations of the resulting resistance and revenge can only look despicably hollow. But who can seriously expect either the British Government or BP to come clean, be honest and explain that, at times, they are perfectly prepared to compromise on human rights for the sake of business interests? If this is the policy, then include it in your manifestos and let us at least have the chance to vote on it." 
For another account of US intervention in Iran at this time - particularly the exaggeration of the communist threat, the political terror employed by the Shah's SAVAK and the strategic advantages to the US of the Shah's compliance - see William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II, Montreal, New York and London: Black Rose Books, 1998, Ch.9. (Iran 1953. Making it safe for the King of Kings - excerpted from the book Killing Hope by William Blum). 1951.

In nationalizing the resources of his country and in being one of the first Middle Eastern leaders along with Arabia's Ibn Saud to recognize and exploit the power of radio to shape public opinion, Mossadegh established practices that leaders of other Third World countries (notably Egypt's Nasser) would put to use with equal success.

Great Britain responded to the nationalization of the AIOC by boycotting Iranian oil. The United States joined the boycott in 1952 effectively preventing Iran from selling any of its oil on the open international market. Iran plunged into an economic crisis and this set the stage for the CIA backed coup that restored the Shah to power in 1953.

In April, 1951, Mohammed Moussadiq, the leader of the Iranian National Party, was democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. This worried the British government as he had demonstrated that he could not be bought or bribed by any amount of British oil money, his concerns being wholly for the welfare of the indigenous community.

The British priority was to support political 'stability' in the country from which British oil interests and the British Government profited so greatly. Therefore, almost as soon as he had been elected, the Labour Government of the day began to plot his overthrow. 

MARK CURTIS. 'The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945' 1995.
"In the early 1950s the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, later renamed British Petroleum, which was managed from London and owned by the British government and British private citizens, controlled Iran's main source of income: oil…  
Iranians could point to AIOC's effectively autonomous rule in the parts of the country where the oilfields lay, its low wage rates and the fact that the Iranian government was being paid royalties of 10% or 12% of the company's net proceeds, whilst the British government received as much as 30% of these in taxes alone…  
The origin of British planning to aid the overthrow of Musaddiq lay in his decision to nationalise oil operations in Iran, which was passed into law in May 1951, the month after he became Prime Minister. In the dispute that followed but Britain demanded either a new oil concession or a settlement that would compensate for loss of future profits".
DFERGUSSON. Labour Minister of Fuel and Power. Foreign Office communication to R. Stokes. 3rd October, 1951. PRO, FO 371/91599.
"The AIOC not only make revenues from Iranian oil: '… greatly in excess of the revenues of the Persian government, but it dominates the whole economic life of Persia, and therefore impairs her independence." It is... a great foreign organisation controlling Persia's economic life and destiny… in the case of a mineral like oil [the Iranians] are of course morally entitled to a royalty but to say that morally they are entitled to 50%, or... even more of the profits of enterprises to which they have made no contribution whatever, is bunk, and ought to be shown to be bunk."
FSHEPHERD. British Ambassador in Iran. Foreign Office

 "It is so important to prevent the Persians from destroying their main source of revenue... by trying to run it themselves... The need for Persia is not to run the industry for herself but to profit from the technical ability of the West." (2nd October, 1951. PRO, FO 371/91464 .)
"The new Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Moussadiq, is… comparatively free from the taint of having amassed wealth and influence through the improper use of official positions; they can therefore attack the majority deputies, few of whom are in the same happy condition without fear of dangerous counter-attacks." (Foreign Office communication to Herbert Morrison. 15th March, 1951. PRO, FO371/91454)
After Mussadiq offered to compensate the AIOC, Britain demanded either a new oil concession or a settlement that would compensate for the loss of forty years future profits. Of this, Shepherd said:
"Persian public opinion is unanimous in rejecting the offer."
FOREIGN OFFICE MEMORANDUM. "Persia: the State Department's views." 16th April 1952. PRO, FO 371/98688 In the US State Department's view: "… a reasonable solution with Musaddiq is impossible… but there is hope of a change which would bring moderate elements into control."

CHIEFS OF STAFF COMMITTEE. 16th May, 1951. PRO, FO 371/91460. "… the simplest method of bringing the Persians to heel might well be simply to stop the production and export of oil… the effect might be to bankrupt Persia thus possibly leading to revolution." The AIOC did "stop the production and export of oil" and thus deprived Iran of its chief source of income. US oil companies refused to handle Iranian oil, in order to prevent other oil-exporting countries from getting the wrong idea.

ANTHONY EDEN. British Foreign Secretary and future Prime Minister. 5th August, 1952. PRO, CAB 129/54/CP (52) 276.
"It has been our objective for some time to get Sayyid Zia appointed Prime Minister."
R. BOWKER. To Eden. 2nd September, 1951. PRO, FO 371/91463.
"The Foreign Office acknowleged in September 1951 that Zia was a man who had 'no popular support' and whose appointment "was likely to provoke a strong public reaction."
However, Zia was 'the one man who would be able, and anxious, to get a reasonable oil settlement with us," and promote the 'development and reform which is essential for Persia's future stability.'

HERBERT MORRISON. British Foreign Secretary. 20th July, 1951. PRO, CAB, 129/46/CP (51)212.

Morrison advocated military intervention and the occupation of Abadan, the centre of AIOC's operations and the site of the world's largest oil refinery. He suggested that this would 'would demonstrate once and for all to the Persians British determination not to allow the... AIOC to be evicted from Persia and might well result in the downfall of the Mussadiq regime and its replacement by more reasonable elements prepared to negotiate a settlement.' He added:
"It might be expected to produce a salutary effect throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, as evidence that United Kingdom interests could not be recklessly molested with impunity." 
The option of military intervention was kept open by the Labour Government until September 1951, when it was decided that the British should be evacuated.

WINSTON CHURCHILL. Churchill poured scorn upon his predecessors 'who had scuttled and run from Abadan when a splutter of musketry would have ended the matter.' ('End of Empire,' p. 264, by Brian Lapping. 1989)
"If we had fired the volley you were responsible for at Ismaila none of these difficulties... would have occurred." (To Eden. 17th June, 1952. PRO, FO 371/98600.)
In January, 1952, after an assault by Egyptian rebels on a British military base, Britain occupied the town of Ismaila, surrounded the police headquarters and then killed fifty people and wounding a hundred more.

BRITISH OFFICIAL. "End of Empire," p. 266, by Brian Lapping. 1989.
"Our policy was to get rid of Mossadeq as soon as possible."
RICHARD COTTAM. CIA agent in Teheran. "The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945," p. 93, by Mark Curtis. 1995.
"That mob that came into north Tehran and was decisive in the overthrow was a mercenary mob. It had no ideology. That mob was paid for by American dollars and the amount of money that was used has to have been very large." 
Ann Lambton, a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, had suggested in a conversation with a Foreign Office official 'covert means... to undermine the position of Mr. Moussadek' and that the 'ideal man to do it would be Dr. Zaehner', an Oxford lecturer who had been 'extremely successful in covert propaganda in 1944' in Iran.

Zaehner was swiftly despatched to Iran by the Labour government to aid the fall of Musaddiq, for which he was provided with considerable sums of money.E. Berthoud to R. Bowker, 15 June 1951, PRO, FO 371/91548.Imagine if Aug. 19, 1953, had come and gone, uneventfully. Imagine if Operation Ajax, coordinated by the British MI6 and the American CIA, which toppled the flourishing democracy in Iran of Mohammed Mossadeq, had never left the drawing board.

Imagine if the Western-educated Mossadeq, a charismatic leader who was massively backed in Iran by a burgeoning middle class, had been allowed to peacefully lead his country to become the first truly Muslim democracy in the Middle East. And imagine if his government had been allowed to assume its obligations and responsibilities, as stipulated by the 1906 constitution, and if the shah had been allowed to reign but not rule, as again stipulated by the Iranian constitution, and imagine if Britain and the U.S. had not been egged on by oil companies livid over Mossadeq's nationalization of oil interests in Iran but instead had stayed out of Iran's business and not intervened. Imagine what would have likely happened. 

The friendly relationship to the Shah’s Iran which had blossomed in the 1970s and accelerated during Carter’s Presidency increased the animosity felt by Iranian fundamentalists, who regarded as anathema the urban overcrowding, the increasing discrepancy between the rich and poor and the corruption that came with Western style liberalization.

Saddam Hussein became the third President of Iraq in 1979. The Communist Party was shut down in May of that year and, immediately thereafter, several hundred government officials whom he accused of conspiring against Saddam were executed. It would be fair to say that, right from the outset, western politicians have known that this man is no angel.

On the other hand, women are not required to wear veils or to cover their heads, and they are allowed to have a career; literacy levels amongst the Iraqi people have risen dramatically in the last twenty three years, and, before the Gulf War, if anyone living in a country bordering Iraq wated to ‘have a good time’ they would steal across the Iraqi border to have it.

In November, 1979, the American embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian students. The Iranian Shah had been deposed by a revolutionary Islamic government earlier in the year and this had led to a deterioration in Iran-U.S. relations. After the embassy was taken, President Carter halted oil imports from Iran and froze Iranian assets in the US. In late April, 1980, the US attempted an ill thought out rescue mission.

In 1975, under pressure from a bellicose, US backed Shah, Iraq had signed majority control of the Shatt al Arab waterway over to Iran. Reza Shah Pahlevi and the resultant weakening of Iran's military, Iraq seized the opportunity to reclaim the Shatt al Arab.

On January 20th 1981, the same day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, the US released billions of dollars worth of Iranian assets and the hostages were freed after 444 days in detention.

In April, 1980 members of the Shi'ite political party ‘al-Dawah’ attempted to assassinate Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz. An attempt on the life of Iraq's minister of culture and information also occurred. Al-Dawah was supported and encouraged by Iran.

Iraq declared war on Iran the following September. In the early stages of the war it appeared that Iraq might win a quick victory, since many of Iran’s military leaders, who were not fundamentalist, had been imprisoned and Iran was unable to buy spare parts for its US built aircraft because of the hostage crisis.

However, after releasing its competent military personnel and mobilizing the Shi'ite hordes, the situation changed. A major miscalculation which led Saddam to launch the war was an expectation that the Iranian Arab population in the ‘Arabistan’ region would welcome the Arab Nationalist Iraqis as liberators and turn against the fervent theocracy of the non-Arab Iranians. This did not happen.

In 1981, without warning or provocation, Israel’s jets attacked and destroyed a nuclear reactor in Iraq. This nuclear facilty wholly complied with the existing regulations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iraq had signed and Israel had not. Even the Ronald Reagan condemned Israel's attack on the Osirak nuclear facility, as did the UN Security Council. Israel, however, dismissed these condemnations, complaining of unfair treatment and harassment.

In September 1981, the use of massed infantry, who would charge into battle waving the Koran ever ready to die a martyr’s death, began to tip the balance in favour of Iran. Iran could suffer four times as many casualties as Iraq and still win the war. In June, 1982, Saddam Hussein attempted to make peace, but Iran turned a deaf ear to his offers.

At this point Saddam began to buy crop dusting helicopters from the United States, which everyone concerned knew would be used to deliver chemical weapons. Loans from the Banco Nazionale del Lavaro to Iraq for arms purchases were organised as early as 1984 by Kissinger Associates.

In late December 1983 a meeting took place in Baghdad which suggested the promise of a new order in the Middle East. Reagan’s Middle East envoy informed Saddam Hussein that Washington was willing to resume the diplomatic relations which had been severed at the time of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.

At the end of 1983, Saddam Hussein’s Ba'th Party officially recognised the Kurds, and negotiations were begun with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan , one of the two major Kurdish political organisations in Iraqi Kurdistan. A fractious peace lasted until January 1985…

In April, 1984, Saddam asked for a face to face meeting with Ayatollah Khomeini to negotiate peace, but the offer was again refused. Four years later, the year hostilties ceased, Iran was still rejecting a United Nations resolutions calling for a ceasefire. During the war, Iraq improved the range of its SCUD missiles, so that they could reach Teheran. Iraq also developed a capacity for mass producing chemical weapons. The threat of chemical warheads being used against Teheran is thought to have been the main reason that, ultimately, persuaded Iran to make peace.

One month before the UN invasion of Kuwait/Iraq, a US army report detailed the destruction of Kuwait, the firing of the oil wells and which companies would be involved in the lucrative rebuilding of Kuwait and extinguishing the fires. In the ensuing bombing, Iraqui industry, and therefore its post-conflict economy, was destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people have died, either as a direct result of indiscriminate bombing or in the ensuing poverty and deprivation.

Once the PUK resumed fighting in 1985, it managed to exert a good deal of military pressure on the Iraqi army in the north; more than a quarter of Iraq's entire army was tied up again in the north fighting against the Kurds. The political and military strength of the Kurdish forces was boosted with the rapprochement of the PUK, KDP and the smaller Kurdish political groupings in 1987, and the subsequent formation of the Iraqi Kurdistan Front.

In 1986 Vice President George Bush urged Saddam Hussein to intensify his air war against Iran, in order to increase Iran's demand for US made anti-aircraft weapons. Iran approached the PUK with an offer to combine forces against Saddam. Joint operations were undertaken and Iranian Revolutionary guards joined in attacks on Iraqi targets.

By 1987, the Kurds had become the most powerful internal opposition in Iraq. The PUK alone controlled an area bigger than the Kuwait, including the Arbil and Sulaymania provinces. The KDP held the Bahdinan area in the Duhok and Mousil provinces.

This convinced Saddam Hussein that he would have to use ‘unconventional’ measures to quell this threat. He, therefore, gave Ali Hassan Al-Majid, Governor of Northern Iraq, permission to use chemical weapons against the Kurds. The use of these weapons turned the tide in Iraq’s favour. Many Kurdish villages were, thereafter, demolished and their inhabitants scattered all over Iraq and beyond.

The eight-year war against Iraq discouraged Iran from lending their overt support to Islamic revolution in neighbouring countries. United States policy in the area was, thus, vindicated and, at the time, there was mischievous talk amongst some political scientists, to the effect that Iraq might replace Israel as the primary US ally in the region. In addition to its good relations with the US, Saddam had gained respect amongst secular Araby, the threat of Shi’ite fundamentalism having been removed.

By the end of the war, Iraq had become the second most powerful country in the region, after Israel. Immediately after the Iran/Iraq War came to an end, a calculated anti-Iraqi smear-campaign began. This was centred around the events that took place at al-Halabja, in March, 1988, where chemical weapons killed a number of the inhabitants of that Kurdish village. The Iranians claimed that there were 5,000 dead at al-Halabja, but the journalists who visited the town would only say that they saw 'more than a hundred bodies.'

As the story was first broached by the Iranian authorities, it was, initially, received sceptically by most, and did not become a big issue in the Western media until September 1st 1988, when William Safire wrote an article about al-Halabja in the "New York Times." As both sides had used chemical weapons throughout the Iran/Iraq War, the Reagan Administration had turned a blind eye but George Bush major, echoing Safire’s prior indignation, and seeing an opportunity to make political capital, said: ‘They must know that continued violation of the ban against the use of such weapons carries a heavy penalty. Not just a fine or a minor sanction that can be ignored.’

It is highly likely that candidate Bush was happy to pick a fight with the country that, in the future, might give Israel and, thus, the Zionist lobby in America the most cause for concern, in order to attract the Jewish vote in the impending election and, more importantly, to win favorable treatment from the US media, which was and is almost wholly owned by Jewish interests, during that crucial pre-election period.

The original Safire article led inevitably, after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, to the Gulf War in 1991, and, since the end of that war, to punitive sanctions and the perpetual bombardment, in peacetime, of a prostrate Iraq by the US and UK airforces. Ten years on from the Gulf War, the development, by those closest to George Bush minor, of America’s Third World War strategy, would follow. This strategy had already been well documented before the events of Sepember 11th 2001.

What has been obscured by the massive propaganda effort on behalf of all of the forces ranged against Saddam’s regime is that the invasion of Kuwait was, to an extent, provoked by the greed of the Kuwaiti leadership. Whilst Iraq was otherwise distracted during its war against Iran, the Kuwaitis used the opportunity to extend their borders into Iraq. In this way they filched 900 square miles of what had, previously been sovereign Iraqi territory.

Disingenuously, some have said that this was only desert and the border had always been disputed anyway. Both of these things were true, but underneath that disputed desert territory lay the beginnings of the vast Rumaila oilfield, the ownership of which was not in dispute.

Having brought their border close enough to this almighty prize the Emir purchased the Hardware and expertise of the Santa Fe Drilling Company of California, for 2.3 billion dollars. This company specialized in slant drilling, that is, they didn’t drill straight down, their particularly valuable skill, for which the Kuwaitis were prepared to spend so much money, lay in the capacity to drill diagonally.

The Emir would be able to siphon off the wealth of Iraq in perpetuity by drilling right into the heart of Iraq’s prime oil reserve. Adding insult to injury, the Kuwaitis chose this moment to dump oil on the world’s markets, with the inevitable consequence that the price of oil fell substantially. This, at a time when the Iraqis needed to maximise their oil revenuez to rebuild an infrastructure and economy devastated by the long years of war with Iran. Saddam protested these aggressive behaviours in diplomatic and formal terms before the invasion was launched.

The Emir did not imagine that Saddam would invade and was tardy and deceitful in his dealings with him. The US and UK, as ever, were happy to stir the pot. In July, 1990, whilst assuring Hussein that his administration had no interest in an: ‘Arab-Arab conflict, like your border disagreement with Kuwait,' Bush senior reached agreement with Gorbachev that Russia would not intervene if America invaded Iraq.

Finally, after Kuwait had been liberated and the retreating Iraqi forces slaughtered by the US air force on the road to Basra, Bush major gave the green light to the Kurds in the north and the Shi’ites in the south to overthrow the remnants of the Iraqi regime.

Both the Kurds and the Shiia eagerly sought revenge on their erstwhile neighbours in the areas where they were predominant and many tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed, the innocent along with the guilty. This uprising was so successful that, at one point, it was said that the forces ranged against Saddam held sway in 15 of Iraq’s 18 provinces.

But then Bush senior and the east coast money men reneged on the deal. The US wanted an Iraq whose behaviour they could predict, not a popular uprising which would inevitably fragment and destabilise the region. They, therefore, secretly gave the go ahead to the very army that they had just defeated to violate the "no-fly" zones that had just been established in order that the Iraqi regime could use its remaining heavy weaponry against the lightly armed Kurdish and Shi’ite militias.

This was done with swift and brutal effectiveness the necessary stability was restored to the region. Evereryone was happy. Except the Kurds and the Shi’ites and the Iraqis who were now dead, and those who were, now, displaced or living in fear of reprisal, most of whom would not have been thus, had Bush major not implied that a rebellion against Ba’th Party’s rule in Iraq, as the Gulf war drew to a close, would be viewed favourably in Washington.

These things were never mentioned in the western media.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER. "Washington Post." 16th September 1988.

"It is time for a decisive geopolitical tilt toward Iran." 


LOCKERBIE

ELSON E. BOLES. "Counter Punch." October 10th 2002. "The Relevance of Yesterday's US Hypocrisy Today."
"In June, 1990, a ‘Nightline’ episode revealed that officials in the Reagan administration, the State Department, the Pentagon, C.I.A., and D.I.A., lied about the locations and behaviour of the *USS Vincennes' after it had shot down an Iranian airliner in 1987 killing over 200 civilians. 
The ‘massive cover up’ Ted Koppel explained, was designed to hide the US secret war against Iran, in which, among other actions, US Special Operations troops and Navy SEALS sunk half of Iran's navy while giving battle plans and logistical information to Iraqi ground forces in a coordinated offensive."
In July, 1988, an Iranian airliner was shot down by the battle cruiser Vincennes over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people on board. It was claimed by the US Navy that this was an accident. In December, 1988, a bomb exploded aboard Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.

It is widely believed that the attack was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, with Iranian backing, in retaliation for the destruction of the Iranian airliner. The obvious reasons for the finger being pointed subsequently at Libya were that the US did not want the general public linking the downing of the Iranian airliner with the loss of the Boeing over Lockerbie, and the political need to have Iran and Syria lined up in the ‘coalition’ the US was about to build against against the newly demonised Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

After an official enquiry into the performance of Will Rogers, the Captain of the Vincennes, he was awarded the US Legion of Merit by George Bush major in 1990. This for 'exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of an outstanding service.'

The Vincennes was part of an international task force sent to the Gulf to protect western oil tankers during the Iran-Iraq War. US military intelligence, however, was waging a covert war in support of Iraq that undermined the commanders in the field, and this led directly to the airbus tragedy. As well as the destruction of half the Iranian navy mentioned above the US navy destroyed many, Iranian oil platforms during the latter stages of the Gulf War.

ADMIRAL DENNIS BROOKS. Commander of American, British, French and Dutch forces in the Gulf during the Iran/Iraq war. "Correspondent: The Other Lockerbie." "BBC2."
"We have a constitution; we wrote down what our rules were, and we told the whole world. We ought not to be down in the weeds trying to conduct illegal operations in front of the world."
Brooks insisted on acting only on written orders directly from the President after becoming increasingly alarmed by interference from US military intelligence’s attempts to promote a covert war against Iran. This resulted in his being moved from his command three months before the airbus incident.

DAVID CARLSON. Captain of the Vincennes' sister ship, USS Sides.
"I view the entire affair as a gigantic screw-up. We should have held people accountable and I believe we should have apologised to the Iranians. Had we apologised, Lockerbie might not have happened."
At the time the Iranian airliner was shot down, the Vincennes was known in the American fleet as "Robocruiser." This because she was said to be "trigger-happy."

SAID K. ABURISH. "Weekend." ("Guardian" supplement.) January 22nd 2000.
"In May, 1987 an Iraqi aircraft mistakenly attacked the American frigate ‘Stark’ and killed 37 US servicemen. Unbelievably, the Reagan administration was so pro-Saddam that it described the incident as nothing more than an Iraqi error and blamed it on Iranian aggression…  
On August 29th, 1988, the UN issued a report that detailed Iraqi use of chemical weapons against the Iranians and Kurds, and called for punitive measures. In January 1989, a TV report alleged that Iraq was also developing biological weapons. But, despite warnings, later that year the US supplied Iraq with helicopter engines, vacuum pumps for a nuclear plant, sophisticated communications equipment, computers, bacteria strains and hundreds of tons of unrefined Sarin, the lethal nerve gas used in chemical warfare."
HALABJA

I’m no fan of Saddam. He is certainly a brutal tyrant but, if Blair and Bush want rid of him let them tell the whole truth. Not just the little bits of it that suit their game plan. Blair, Straw, Hoon et al, have all instructed us ad nauseam as regards the 'moral case for war.'

They state that the chief constituent of this "moral case" is the "gassing of his own people." The massacre of the Kurdish villagers at Halabja is the incident most often cited. What you are about to read demonstrates that, in March, 1988, Halabja was a hotly contested war zone and that gas was used against the opposing forces by both sides in the Iranian/Iraqi conflict.

It is exremely unlikely that the civilian inhabitants of Halabja were deliberately targeted, as is so often implied. The most likely scenario suggests that they were caught in the cross fire. Whilst most should not be held to account for the repetition of an oft told tale, simply because they are in the habit of taking rather too much on trust, the powers that be most certainly should.

It is inconceivable that the prime Minister and his Foreign Office officials would be ignorant of the Pelletiere document and to supress this side of the argument in order to achieve a political end as monumental as that which he, Bush and the American "neo-conservatives" are embarked upon, is unforgivable. The Iranian involvement in the Halabja tragedy has been officially deleted in order to make the case for the 'moral war.'

TONY BLAIR. Prime Minister of the UK.
"We are looking at ways now, together with the Americans, of the possibility of removing Saddam Hussein altogether." (Addressing the House of Commons. July, 1998.)
"We have allowed Saddam to sell oil to buy as much food and medicine for the Iraqi people as necessary." (November, 1998.) "Uniquely Saddam has used these weapons against his own people, the Iraqi Kurds…  
In one attack alone, on the city of Halabja, it is estimated that 5,000 were murdered and 9,000 wounded in this way." ("BBC News." Online. 10th September, 2002) 
"It is an 11-year history, a history of the UN will flouted, lies told by Saddam about the existence of his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes, obstruction, defiance and denial… His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working… with what we know and what we can reasonably speculate, would the world be wise to… do nothing, to conclude that we should trust not to the good faith of the UN weapons inspectors but to the good faith of the current Iraqi regime?  
I defy anyone to say that would be a responsible course to follow. We know, again from our history, that diplomacy, not backed by the threat of force, has never worked with dictators and never will. The threat of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction is not American or British propaganda… Disarmament of all WMD is the demand. One way or the other it must be acceded to." ("The Telegraph." 25th September, 2002)  
"I read the anti-war sites and listen to the protesters and I realize that they haven't a clue, or worse, they just don't give a damn." (February 16th 2003. http://blogmosis.com/weekendpundit/images/wp_sm.jpg)
THE GUARDIAN. 4th March, 2002. "War without end."
"Suspicions persist that the Bush administration is content to watch the conflict simmer while, shamefully egged on by Tony, the little trumpet boy, it plots war in Iraq."
ARI FLEISCHER. White House press spokesman.
Question : "You and the President have repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people. The biggest such attack was in Halabja in March, 1988, where some 6,800 Kurds were killed. Last week in an article in the ‘International Herald Tribune,’ Joost Hilterman writes that: while it was Iraq that carried out the attack, the United States at the time, fully aware that it was Iraq, accused Iran. This was apparently part of the tilt toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. And the tilt included billions of dollars in loan guarantees.  
Sensing that he had carte blanche, Saddam escalated his resort to guesswork there and graduating to ever more lethal agents. So you and the President have said that Saddam has repeatedly gassed his own people, why do you leave out the part that the United States, in effect, gave Saddam the green light?"
FLEISCHER: "I speak for President George W. Bush in the year 2003… you need to address those to somewhere other than this White House... I don't know if that's accurate, inaccurate." (Press briefing. 21st January, 2003) 
"This weekend is the 15th anniversary of Halabjah. This is a chemical attack, an attack on the people of Iraq with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein… In that single order that Saddam Hussein gave to use chemical weapons, the Iraqi regime killed thousands of Iraq's own citizens. Whole families died while trying to flee clouds of nerve and mustard agents descending from the sky.  
Many who managed to survive still suffer from cancer, from blindness and respiratory diseases, miscarriages and severe birth defects as a result of Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons. The President will meet with… three individuals. They will be available to talk to the press at the stake-out afterwards, to discuss what a brutal dictator Saddam Hussein is and how, if force is used, the people of Iraq, will for the first time in decades be able to live in freedom and security with Saddam Hussein no longer engaging his torture." (Press briefing. 14th March, 2003)
GEORGE WBUSH. President of the United States. Radio address to the nation. March 15th 2003.
"This weekend marks a bitter anniversary for the people of Iraq. 15 years ago, Hussein's regime ordered a chemical weapons attack on a village in Iraq called Halabja. With that single order, the regime killed thousands of Iraq's Kurdish citizens. Whole families died while trying to flee clouds of nerve and mustard agents descending from the sky…  
The chemical attack on Halabja… provided a glimpse of the crimes Saddam Hussein is willing to commit, and the kind of threat he now presents to the entire world. He is among history's cruelest dictators, and he is arming himself with the world's most terrible weapons."
ROGER TRILLING. "The Village Voice." May 1st–7th 2002. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0218/trilling.php
"Halabja was attacked in the closing weeks of the Iran-Iraq War, when two Kurdish guerrilla groups sided against Saddam. It lies just inside Iraq's border with Iran, and the Iranians had mounted an offensive in the region. Halabja was thus contested territory. 
That many people died that day is beyond dispute. The question is, Who killed them? When pictures and stories flooded the world press, reporters had been helicoptered in by the Iranians, who saw Halabja as a PR opportunity.  
The reaction was automatic. Most reporters, well aware of Saddam's long history of poison gas use against the Iranian army, accepted their hosts' explanation: Saddam had gassed his own people. The Reagan-Bush White House, which had tilted decisively toward Saddam in the war, denounced Iraq immediately. But the State Department wasn't so sure."
US DEFENCE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY REPORT. March, 1988.
"Most of the casualties in Halabja were reportedly caused by cyanogen chloride. This agent has never been used by Iraq, but Iran has shown interest in it. Mustard gas casualties in the town were probably caused by Iraqi weapons, because Iran has never been noted using that agent."
CHARLES REDMAN. US State Department spokesman. A week after the gassing of the Kurds at Halabja. March, 1988. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0218/trilling.php
"There are indications that Iran may also have used chemical artillery shells in this fighting. We call on Iran and Iraq to desist immediately from the use of any chemical weapons."
MALCOLM WBROWNE. "New York Times," section 4, p. 7. April 17th 1988.
"Iran expects to reap a propaganda harvest by showing that Iraq is gassing those of its own citizens deemed sympathizers in the seven-year-old war... According to the Iranians, a single Iraqi chemical attack on the Iranian-occupied village of Halabja last month killed 5,000 people and injured 5,000 others. Baghdad has said that 58 Iraqi soldiers were injured by Iranian chemical weapons." 
It could legitimately be argued that the above three quotations were 'on message,' as the Reagan administration and its sympathisers were not, at this time, in the business of allowing the Iranians such propaganda coup if they could help it.

JUDE WANNISKI. Former associate editor of the "Wall Street Journal." A letter to George W. Bush's press-secretary, Ari Fleischerhttp://polyconomics.com/PrintPage.asp?TextID=1899
"You might want to have one of your assistants call over to the Pentagon and ask for its 1990 report ‘Iraqi Power and US Security in the Middle East,’ which concluded the Iraqi Kurds who were gassed were probably the victims of the Iranians." 
From here on the US government and most of their media were certainly not in the business of "spinning" on behalf of the Iraqi regime.

THE WASHINGTON POST. May 3rd 1990.
"A Defence Department reconstruction of the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war has assembled what analysts say is conclusive intelligence that one of the worst civilian massacres of the war, in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja, was caused by repeated chemical bombardments from both belligerent armies… 
This calls into question the widely reported assertion of human rights organizations and Kurdish groups that Iraq bore the greatest responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of Iraqi Kurds, women, infants and elderly, who died at Halabja." 
It should be noted that The US Army War College are not in the business of disseminating propaganda to the public. They produce factual reports for the US Military and Government.

PROFESSOR STEPHEN PELLETIERE, COLONEL DOUGLAS V. JOHNSON LEIF ROSENBERGER. "Iraqi power and US security in the Middle East," pp. 52-57. Published by the US Army War College. 1990. http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00034.html
"In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing a great many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds…  
Blood agents were allegedly responsible for the most infamous use of chemicals in the war, the killing of Kurds at Halabjah. Since the Iraqis have no history of using these two agents, and the Iranians do, we conclude that the Iranians perpetrated this attack… 
As a result of the outcome of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq is now the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf, an area in which we have vital interests. To maintain an uninterrupted flow of oil from the Gulf to the West, we need to develop good working relations with all of the Gulf states, and particularly with Iraq, the strongest… under pressure from the Iraqis, all the Arab states of the Gulf, with the possible exception of Oman, would tacitly support a move to withdraw US privilieges in the Gulf."
KEVIN DOWLING. "GLOBE-INTEL." feedback@globe-intel.net 10th October, 2002.
"Tony Blair is a liar, the man who headed the CIA's Iraq desk during the Gulf War said last night… Pelletiere said that crucial claims made in the British Government's Dossier on Iraq, and repeated by Tony Blair in his statement to the Commons, were patently false. 
‘Saddam has used chemical weapons, not only against an enemy state, but against his own people,’ the Dossier states. ‘Saddam has used chemical weapons both against Iran and his own people,’ the Dossier repeats a page or two further on. ‘In 1988 Saddam also used mustard and nerve agents against Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in northern Iraq. Estimates vary but according to Human Rights Watch up to 5,000 people were killed.’  
Not so, said Pelletiere. ‘Most of the civilians killed at Halabja, and it's very unlikely that as many as 5,000 died, were killed by Iranian poison gas,’ he said… At Halabja the rebel Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, helped Iranian forces infiltrate the town by night.  
In the morning, the Iranians burst from hiding, overwhelmed the Iraqi garrison, and drove it from the city. The evicted Iraqi commander called in a barrage of mustard gas, and regained possession of the place. Then the Iranians dumped blood agents on the reoccupying Iraqis. Persistent mustard gas from the Iraqi side, cyanide-based gas from the Iranian side, and the innocent civilians of Halabja were caught in the middle. Several hundred Kurdish civilians were horribly killed during successive attacks and counter-attacks by the opposing armies, but not because they'd been specifically targeted for ethnic cleansing by Saddam Hussein…  
Pelletiere said that the US military had closely studied eyewitness testimony collected from Kurdish refugees in Iran by the veteran British journalist Gwynne Roberts and shown on Channel 4, on November 23rd 1988.  
Survivors described a massacre at Bassay Gorge, in northern Iraq, on August 29, 1988, in which something between 1,500 and 4,000 people, mainly women and children, were supposedly killed by what appears to have been a mixture of various nerve gasses while trying to reach the Turkish border. Their bodies were allegedly piled up and burnt by Iraqi troops wearing gas masks the following morning. Roberts claimed to have entered Iraq clandestinely and brought back fragments of an exploded shell with samples of the surrounding soil, which were later confirmed by a British laboratory as containing traces of mustard gas. 
Commenting on the claims made above, Pelletiere said: 'This report meant nothing. We all know that refugees lie. We all understand the physics of chemical warfare and the difficulties involved in disposing of 4,000 dead bodies. Roberts wouldn't, or couldn't, tell us where he got the shell fragments from. So what have we got? Zilch.' 
In 1990, Pelletiere, Professor Leif Rosenberger and Lieutenant Colonel Dr Douglas Johnson of the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College wrote: "Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War." This can be found at: www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/ Their study drew on the first-hand knowledge of US Defence attachés, CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency analysis, field reports and ‘signals intelligence’ - phone and radio messages sent by the warring armies and picked up by the National Security Agency.  
Pelletiere says this about the study: 'This later became the handbook, the bible, that was issued to all US military units for strategic and tactical guidance during Operation Desert Storm. It's been open-source material for 20 years, so there's no way the British military, the Joint Intelligence Committee, or Tony Blair's staffers can plead ignorance of its contents and conclusions.'
In "Lessons Learned," its follow up, "Iraqi Power and US Security in the Middle East," and, in 2001, "Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Gulf," Pelletiere has pictured Iraq as a Western ally betrayed and demonized by Big Oil."
STEPHEN PELLETIERE. Retired Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Army War College. 9th October, 2002.
"Bush and Blair want a war in Iraq and they are both prepared to lie if necessary, in order to get one… Blair's so-called dossier is supposed to be based on 'intelligence'… It insults our intelligence by recycling old, discredited propaganda and presenting it as fact… When lies appear in an official Government report to a sovereign Parliament, well then you have to ask yourself just what is going on…  
Most of the civilians killed at Halabja, and it's very unlikely that as many as 5,000 died, were killed by Iranian poison gas… The Iranians made a photo-opportunity out of a catastrophe simply by blaming the deaths on Saddam, and then the media happily gobbled their propaganda up. The first stories claimed that there were between 80,000 and 100,000 dead, which was obviously phony. You can't kill that many people using gas, in a concentrated period, in terrain such as exists in northern Iraq. In fact, it would be very difficult to kill even 5,000 in this way. 
The great majority of the victims seen by reporters and other observers who attended the scene were blue in their extremities. That means that they were killed by a blood agent, probably either cyanogen chloride or hydrogen cyanide. Iraq never used and lacked any capacity to produce these chemicals. But the Iranians did deploy them. Therefore the Iranians killed the Kurds.  
The Iraqis did fire mustard gas into Halabja, after the Iranians had attacked and occupied the town, but despite its fearsome reputation mustard gas is an incapacitating agent, rather than an efficient killer. Slightly more than two per cent of those exposed to mustard gas attack can be expected to die. 
Iran had always supported its 'human wave’ attacks by using a non-persistent form of mustard gas which would allow shock troops to occupy Iraqi positions once Saddam's troops had retreated. The Iraqis had learned to develop a heavier, more persistent form of the gas which was designed to slow down the enemy advance. Unfortunately for the spin-doctors, much of the mustard gas that was used at Halabja, which is a border town in a much-disputed territory, carried the Iranian signature…  
The US did not expect Iraq to win the Iran-Iraq war and when it did, US leaders were dumbfounded… As Iraq sought to rebuild itself after the war, the US attempted to prevent this restructuring by seeking to damage Iraq's credit-worthiness. Despite a large debt, Iraq was good for the money because of its oil resources. Still, in the spring of 1988, Iraq did not have cash reserves and wished to reschedule its debt payments.  
The media in the US and elsewhere began running stories on Iraq, the tone of which was extremely hostile. Irrational stories do appear on occasion, but not usually so extensively. This was a deliberate campaign. Congress was debating sanctions on Iraq and when sanctions were eventually declared, Iraq could no longer reschedule its debts." 
A second alleged gas attack by the Iraqis against the Kurds at Amadiyyah in the far northern region of Iraq was fabricated five months after the war had ended. No gassing victims were ever produced. The only evidence that gas was used is the eye-witness testimony of the Kurds who fled to Turkey, collected by staffers of the US Senate.  
We showed this testimony to experts in the military who told us it was worthless. The symptoms described by the Kurds do not conform to any known chemical or combination of chemicals. Lacking any gassing victims, and given the fact that the testimony does not seem credible we were unwilling to say that in fact the attacks had occurred.  
At the same time, throughout the study we cited instances of Iraqi-instigated chemical attacks against Iranian military units. There is no doubt that these occurred; indeed the Iraqis have stated on occasion that they feel justified in using chemicals tactically under certain conditions. However, they deny using chemicals as a weapon of mass destruction, that is against civilians. What our study concludes is that those who claim they are doing so need to come up with some more convincing proof." 
(http://www.rense.com/general30/blair.htm)
"There is to this day, the belief, and I'm not the only one who holds it, that things didn't happen in Halabja the way Goldberg* wrote it… And it's an especially crucial issue right now. We say Saddam is a monster, a maniac who gassed his own people, and the world shouldn't tolerate him. But why? Because that's the last argument the US has for going to war with Iraq." ("The Village Voice." May 1st–7th 2002. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0218/trilling.php
*Referring to Jeffrey Goldberg’s 18,000-word essay about the massacre at Halabja in the March 25th 2002 issue of "The New Yorker." This essay is routinely quoted by the Bush adminstration as proof of Sadaam’s treachery.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG. Author of "The Great Terror."
"It is estimated that as many as two hundred thousand Kurds were killed, including five thousand in a single gas attack on the city of Halabja. Dozens of other towns and villages were also struck by chemical weapons. If the world were to fully acknowledge the crime that took place, wouldn't it be a moral necessity to remove Saddam Hussein from power? Imagine if Hitler remained in power into the early nineteen-sixties." ("The New Yorker." 18th - 25th March, 2002)  
"Very quickly into this story, I decided that I support the mainstream view, of Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the State Department, the UN, and various Kurdish groups, that the Iraqis were responsible for Halabja. In the same way, I didn't give any merit to the Iraqi denials." ("The Village Voice." May 1st – 7th 2002)
RAJU G. C. THOMAS. Ph.D. Professor of International Affairs at Marquette University, Milwaukee. Thomas has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard, U.C.L.A., M.I.T., and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. http://www.marquette.edu/polisci/Thomas.htm
"Claims that Iraqis gassed their own Kurdish civilians are constantly invoked by the mass media. That excuse was used by President Clinton in December 1998 to justify the further bombing and destruction of Iraq… The Halabjah incident is one of the reasons being proposed now by Prime Minister Blair and President Bush for a full-scale military assault on Iraq…  
Blair's dossier includes a photograph which I know for a fact was produced by the Iranian propaganda machine… Bush and Blair want a 'regime change' simply because if sanctions were to be lifted then Saddam's regime would favour Russian and French oil companies rather than US or British multinationals… This dispute has little to do with any war on terrorism. And it is quite wrong that we should base public policy on propaganda and lies.  
Meanwhile, estimates of the number of innocents who have died in Iraq from relentless American-dictated UN sanctions range between a million and 1.7 million, including more than half a million children… It all boils down to two three-letter words. Ego and oil." raju.thomas@marquette.edu
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS. Page 51. October, 1988.
"The US government… said two members of the US Embassy staff in Ankara had seen ‘8 or 10’ people with serious skin rashes and had talked to refugees who had heard from other refugees that poison gas had been dropped from aircraft. Turkish physicians treating the sick and injured among 80,000 Kurds who streamed across the Iraqi border said they had not seen a single victim.  
They attributed skin rashes to malnutrition and poor sanitation. George Shultz's State Department then said it had ‘other evidence,’ presumably intercepted military communications, that the Iraqis had used gas. The case began to smell like exhumed Middle Eastern red herring from 1967 or 1970 when ‘other sources’ turned out to be Israel, which has a proven track record in manufacturing false electronic traffic which Western powers or the Soviets then mistakenly attribute to Arab states. 
At this writing there is no incontrovertible evidence either that Iraq did or did not use poison gas after the cease-fire with Iran. Iraq denies the charges. Turkey backs up Iraq. American and other journalists in both countries have not found a single Kurdish victim nor any physical evidence…  
During their eight year-long war Iraq, outnumbered three-to-one, introduced poison gas and Iran retaliated in kind. The world condemned Iraq. Iran then claimed Iraq was planning to mount poison gas warheads on missiles aimed both at troops at the front and at Iranian cities. The propaganda backfired dramatically. Iranian troops deserted and two million civilians fled in panic from Tehran.  
As his war front and home front collapsed, the Ayatollah Khomeini swallowed his ‘poison pill’ of agreement to the cease-fire Iraq had accepted a year earlier. Not long before Khomeini threw in the towel, the world had been horrified at photos of dead civilians in the Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja.
Kurds said Iraqis had dropped the gas canister or canisters that killed the civilians from an airplane. The Iraqis said it was an Iranian plane… the poison gas was dropped on the same day or the day after the village was wrested from Iraqi troops by Iranian troops… It’s possible that… whoever dropped the poison gas believed he was hitting enemy troop concentrations in a deserted village. Whatever the motive, it's indisputable that the gas was used at Halabja well before the war was over and while the village was literally in the front lines. 
There are now some 20 million Kurds in the world, half of them in Turkey, large numbers in Iran and Iraq, and small numbers in the Soviet Union, Syria, and-as recent urban migrants-in Lebanon as well. Although Iraqi governments and their Kurdish citizens have been fighting off and on for 40 years, and Iraq has been resettling rebellious Kurdish mountaineers in the plains for many of them, in fact the Kurds enjoy more autonomy in Iraq than in the other countries. In northern Iraq, Kurdish children can study in Kurdish schools, using the Kurdish language and Kurdish textbooks. 
A major issue between the Iraqi government and two groups of Kurdish leaders, however, has been whether or not the city of Kirkuk and its major oil fields are to be inside or outside the area where such Kurdish educational and cultural autonomy exists. These leaders, Jalal Talabani and the sons of the late, long-time Kurdish rebel leader, Mullah Mustapha Barzani, threw in their lot with Iran in the second year of the Iran-Iraq war. Now that Iranian troops have been pushed out of Kurdistan and a cease-fire is in place, the Iraqi army has moved with a vengeance against the followers of those leaders…  
There is no doubt that the resulting panic has contributed to the sudden influx of Kurdish refugees into Turkey."
ROBIN COOK. UK Foreign Secretary.
"Ten years ago next month, Saddam used chemical weapons to kill 5,000 Iraqi citizens at Halabja." (House of Commons. 10th February, 1998)  
"Next month will see the 10th anniversary of his most notorious use of chemical weapons, when he wiped out the entire town of Halabja and its population of 5,000 Iraqi Kurds with a mixture of nerve and cyanide gases. The great majority of those who were killed that day were women, children and elderly men who were not under arms. That fact demonstrates that the weapons are not legitimate weapons of military Defence. They are weapons of terror for use against civilian populations." (House of Commons. 17th February, 1998)  
"Saddam Hussein is the leader of a country in which he has himself used chemical and biological weapons. He used them extensively against his neighbour in the Iran-Iraq war and used them mercilessly against his own people in the Kurdish area where he killed 5,000 villagers when he attacked Halabja. We cannot walk away and leave a man with such a track record in possession of those weapons." (House of Commons. 19th January, 1999)  
"In 1988, when the guidelines on exports to Iraq were relaxed, Lord Howe, the then Foreign Secretary, was telling the world and the House that he had compelling evidence that gas had been used to kill 5,000 Kurds, mostly women and children, in the Halabja massacre." (House of Commons. 23rd November, 1992. Whilst Leader of the House)
BARONESS SYMONS. Foreign Office Minister; later Minister for Trade and Investment. "Ten years ago next month, Saddam used chemical weapons to kill 5,000 Iraqi citizens at Halabja." (House of Lords. 10th February, 1998)
"Saddam Hussein's brutal disregard for human life is directed not just at those outside Iraq. He has used poison gas against ordinary Iraqis, deliberately murdering unarmed civilians. Halabja has become a terrible by-word throughout the world for the horror perpetrated there." (House of Lords. 24th September, 2002)
GEORGE ROBERTSON. Secretary of State for Defence. House of Commons. 17th December, 1998. Future NATO supremo.
"He used chemical agents extensively against Iran and even against his own people at Halabja in March 1988, when he killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds with mustard gas and the nerve agent tabun."
GEOFF HOON. UK Defence Secretary.
"Iraq has already used chemical weapons extensively against Iran and against its own Kurdish civilians, at Halabja, in March 1998, attacking them with mustard gas and the nerve agent Tabun and killing thousands in the process." (House of Commons. 29th June, 1999) 
"A further aim of our policy has been to limit Saddam's ability to kill and terrorise his own people. That is why we have conducted patrols of the no-fly zones since the early 1990s in support of United Nations Security Council resolution 688, which demanded an end to his brutal repression. The zones have served a vital humanitarian purpose over the past decade in constraining Saddam's ability to carry out such repression, particularly in relation to the Shias and the Kurds. 
The patrols are justified in international law as a legitimate response to prevent a grave humanitarian crisis. Without them, Saddam would be free, as he was prior to their establishment, to use aircraft and helicopter gunships against innocent civilians… Many tens of thousands would be displaced from their homes, thousands would lose their lives, perhaps, as happened in 1988 at Halabja, following the use of chemical weapons." (House of Commons. 26th February, 2001) 
"We have always made it clear that we would reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in conditions of extreme self Defence… Saddam can be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use nuclear weapons." ("BBC News." 2nd February, 2003)
PETER HAIN. Foreign Office Minister. Future Europe Minister and Secretary of State for Wales.
"Let us not forget that Saddam Hussein has used his weapons of mass destruction before, with devastating results. We remember in particular the Kurdish town of Halabja, where Saddam ordered the use of chemical weapons, including nerve agents, killing 4,000 to 5,000 civilians and injuring perhaps 10,000 more. Saddam also used chemical weapons against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war." (8th February, 2000)
JACK STRAW. British Foreign Secretary.
"The Iraqi regime has systematically persecuted and oppressed ethnic and religious groups. No group has suffered more than the Iraqi Kurds… The world had a glimpse of the genocide in 1988 when Iraqi planes used poison gas to kill 5,000 Kurds in Halabja… Halabja confirmed that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction would be turned against his own people as well as the outside world." ("Debate on Iraq." House of Commons. 24th September, 2002) 
"The purpose of UNSCR 1441 is the peaceful disarmament of Saddam's arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction, an arsenal that he has been prepared to use not only against external enemies such as Iran but as a means of oppressing his own people too. It is surely a regime of unique horror, which is prepared to kill thousands of its own civilians by poisonous gas. Yet what occurred in Halabja in 1988 is a vivid demonstration of the integral part Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction play in the rule of fear, which pervades Iraq today." (Breakfast meeting of the "Transatlantic Partnership." London. 2nd December, 2002)
"Saddam Hussein is not entitled to any presumption of innocence. It is for him to prove that he has, once and for all, given up what we know he has… The Iraqi regime used nerve agents to gas 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the village of Halabja in 1988…  
Iraq is a major oil producer. We all depend on regularity of supplies, not least from the Middle East… We would ensure that Iraq's oil wealth was used to the benefit of the Iraqi people. That is a promise, and not just from Britain. Colin Powell has made the same commitment on behalf of the US… I recognise that for the professional conspiracy theorists, no answer is good enough…  
We will move swiftly to secure Iraq's oil fields… Oil is Iraq's legacy… Our future vision for Iraq is of a stable, united and law abiding state, within its present borders, cooperating with the UN, no longer posing a threat to its neighbours or to international security." ("The Guardian." February 21st 2003)
MIKE OBRIEN. Foreign Office Minster.
"A single attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja killed up to 5,000 civilians and injured some 10,000 more." (House of Commons. 5th December, 2002)  
"We cannot allow international law to be continually breached, and the level of threat to be increased by Saddam. This is a man who authorised the use of chemical and biological weapons against his own people in Halabja in 1988 and killed five thousand men, women and children and nine thousand others were wounded." (Interview with Jonathan Dimbleby. "ITV." 17th November, 2002)  
"The campaign included the use of chemical weapons where a single attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja killed up to 5,000 civilians and injured some 10,000 more." (House of Commons. 5th December, 2002) 
"I urge my hon. Friend to remember the 5,000 men, women and children who died at Halabja in 1988 and the 9,000 who were injured there. We need to make sure that Saddam Hussein is recognised as the tyrant that he is, and is dealt with accordingly." (House of Commons. 21st January, 2003)
KURDISH LEADERS. A letter to Margaret Thatcher following the events at Halabja in March, 1988. 16th August, 1988.
"One of our few remaining hopes is that democrats and those who cherish values of justice, peace and freedom will voice their concern for the plight of the Kurds." 
GEOFFREY HOWE . Foreign Secretary. Speaking after the chemical attack upon Halabja in 1988.

"BBC Hardtalk." 22nd August, 2002.
"Evidence of chemical weapons is compelling but not conclusive." 
A British £340 million export credit deal with Iraq went through on September 5th 1988.


THE BUILD UP TO GULF WAR 1 

SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION REPORT. July, 1990.
"Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environment and Health Considerations," appendix D. "US Army Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command report: 'Kinetic Energy Penetrator Long Term Strategy Study'."
"Aerosol Depleted Uranium exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects… it is a low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, chemical toxicity causing kidney damage…  
Short-term effects of high doses can result in death, while long term effects of low doses have been linked to cancer… Our conclusion regarding the health and environmental acceptability of DU penetrators assume both controlled use and the presence of excellent health physics management practices. Combat conditions will lead to the uncontrolled release of DU…  
The conditions of the battlefield, and the long term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic penetrators for military applications."
APRIL GLASPIE. US Ambassador to Iraq. The following is a conversation that Glaspie had with Saddam Hussein eight days before the Iraqui invasion of Kuwait. As described in the US State Department transcripts of 25th July 1990.
"President Bush is an intelligent man. He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq… I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait. James Baker [US Secretary of State] has directed our official spokesmen to emphasise this instruction…  
When we see the Iraqi point of view that the measures taken by the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are, in the final analysis, tantamount to military aggression against Iraq, then it is reasonable for me to be concerned."
Seven weeks after the Iraqui invasion of Kuwait Glaspie described in the, "New York Times," of 20th September 1990, why the Bush administration were now so upset with Sadaam Hussein:
"Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait."
MARGARET TUTWEILLER . US State Department spokeswoman. 24th July 1990, nine days before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
"We do not have any Defence treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special Defence or security commitments to Kuwait."
JOHN STAUBER AND SHELDON RAMPTON. "Packaging The Emir: How the public relations industry sold the Gulf War to the US." http://www.io.com/~patrik/gulfwar1.htm
"On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops led by dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the oil-producing nation of Kuwait… Hussein had been a US ally for nearly a decade. From 1980 to 1988, he had killed about 150,000 Iranians, in addition to at least 13,000 of his own citizens. Despite complaints from international human rights groups, however, the Reagan and Bush administrations had treated Hussein as a valuable ally in the US confrontation with Iran.  
As late as July 25, a week before the invasion of Kuwait, US Ambassador April Glaspie commiserated with Hussein over a ‘cheap and unjust’ profile by ABC's Diane Sawyer, and wished for an ‘appearance in the media, even for five minutes,’ by Hussein that ‘would help explain Iraq to the American people.’ Glaspie's ill-chosen comments may have helped convince the dictator that Washington would look the other way if he ‘annexed’ a neighboring kingdom. 
The invasion of Kuwait, however, crossed a line that the Bush Administration could not tolerate. This time Hussein's crime was far more serious that simply gassing to death another brood of Kurdish refugees. This time oil was at stake. Viewed in strictly moral terms, Kuwait hardly looked like the sort of country that deserved defending, even from a monster like Hussein. The tiny but super-rich state had been an independent nation for just a quarter century when in 1986 the ruling al-Sabah family tightened its dictatorial grip over the ‘black gold’ fiefdom by disbanding the token National Assembly and firmly establishing all power in the be-jeweled hands of the ruling Emir.  
Then, as now, Kuwait's ruling oligarchy brutally suppressed the country's small democracy movement, intimidated and censored journalists, and hired desperate foreigners to supply most of the nation's physical labor under conditions of indentured servitude and near-slavery. The wealthy young men of Kuwait's ruling class were know as spoiled party boys in university cities and national capitals from Cairo to Washington… Iraq had a substantial army that could not be subdued in a mere weekend of fighting…  
Hussein was too far away from US soil, too rich with oil money, and too experienced in ruling through propaganda and terror to be dislodged through the psychological-warfare techniques of low-intensity conflict. Waging a war to push Iraq's invading army from Kuwait would cost billions of dollars and require massive US military mobilization.  
The American public was notoriously reluctant to send its young into foreign battles on behalf of any cause. Selling war in the Middle East to the American people would not be easy. Bush would need to convince Americans that former ally Saddam Hussein now embodied evil, and that the oil fiefdom of Kuwait was a struggling young democracy.  
How could the Bush Administration build US support for ‘liberating’ a country so fundamentally opposed to democratic values? How could the war appear noble and necessary rather than a crass grab to save cheap oil?…Sam Zakhem, a former US ambassador to the oil-rich gulf state of Bahrain, funneled $7.7 million in advertising and lobbying dollars through two front groups, the ‘Coalition for Americans at Risk’ and the ‘Freedom Task Force.’  
The Coalition, which began in the 1980s as a front for the contras in Nicaragua, prepared and placed TV and newspaper ads, and kept a stable of fifty speakers available for pro-war rallies and publicity events. Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. It's activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to enforce it. 
 Nine days after Saddam's army marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund a contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent ‘Citizens for a Free Kuwait’ a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, whose only other funding totalled $17,862 from 78 individuals.  
Virtually all of CFK's budget, $10.8 million, went to Hill & Knowlton in the form of fees. The man running Hill & Knowlton's Washington office was Craig Fuller, one of Bush's closest friends and inside political advisors… 
In addition to Republican notables like Gray and Fuller, Hill & Knowlton maintained a well-connected stable of in-house Democrats who helped develop the bipartisan support needed to support the war. Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who headed the Kuwait campaign, had previously worked with super-lobbyist Ron Brown representing Haiti's Duvalier dictatorship. Hill & Knowlton senior vice-president Thomas Ross had been Pentagon spokesman during the Carter Administration.  
To manage the news media, H&K relied on vice-chairman Frank Mankiewicz, whose background included service as press secretary and advisor to Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern, followed by a stint as president of National Public Radio…  
Hill & Knowlton produced dozens of video news releases at a cost of well over half a million dollars, but it was money well spent, resulting in tens of millions of dollars worth of ‘free’ air time. The VNRs were shown by eager TV news directors around the world who rarely identified Kuwait's public relations firm as the source of the footage and stories. TV stations and networks simply fed the carefully crafted propaganda to unwitting viewers, who assumed they were watching ‘real’ journalism.  
After the war Arthur Rowse asked Hill & Knowlton to show him some of the VNRs, but the PR company refused. Obviously the phony TV news reports had served their purpose and it would do H&K no good to help a reporter reveal the extent of deception…  
Throughout the campaign, the Wirthlin Group conducted daily opinion polls to help Hill & Knowlton take the emotional pulse of key constituencies so it could identify the themes and slogans that would be most effective in promoting support for US military action…  
Every big media event needs what journalist and flacks alike refer to as ‘the hook.’ An ideal hook becomes the central element of a story that makes it newsworthy, evokes a strong emotional response, and sticks in the memory. In the case of the Gulf War, the ‘hook’ was invented by Hill & Knowlton.  
On October 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill which provided the first opportunity for formal presentations of Iraqi human rights violations. Outwardly, the hearing resembled an official congressional proceeding, but appearances were deceiving. In reality, the Human Rights Caucus, chaired by California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter, was simply an association of politicians. Lantos and Porter were co-chairs of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, a legally separate entity that occupied free office space valued at $3,000 a year in Hill & Knowlton's Washington, DC office.  
Notwithstanding its congressional trappings, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus served as another Hill & Knowlton front group, which… used a noble-sounding name to disguise its true purpose… … the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait.  
Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. ‘I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital,’ Nayirah said. ‘While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where… babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.’  
Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of the babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council… At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family.  
Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony. If Nayirah's outrageous lie had been exposed at the time it was told, it might have at least caused some in Congress and the news media to soberly reevaluate the extent to which they were being skillfully manipulated to support military action.  
Public opinion was deeply divided on Bush's Gulf policy. As late as December 1990, a New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 48 percent of the American people wanted Bush to wait before taking any action if Iraq failed to withdraw from Kuwait by Bush's January 15 deadline.  
On January 12, the US Senate voted by a narrow, five-vote margin to support the Bush administration in a declaration of war. Given the narrowness of the vote, the babies-thrown-from-incubators story may have turned the tide in Bush's favor. Following the war, human rights investigators attempted to confirm Nayirah's story and could find no witnesses or other evidence to support it.  
Amnesty International, which had fallen for the story, was forced to issue an embarrassing retraction. Nayirah herself was unavailable for comment… When journalists asked Nasir al-Sabah for permission to question Nayirah about her story, the ambassador angrily refused. The military build-up in the Persian Gulf began by flying and shipping hundreds of thousands of US troops, armaments and supplies to staging areas in Saudi Arabia, yet another nation with no tolerance for a free press, democratic rights and most western customs.  
In a secret strategy memo, the Pentagon outlined a tightly woven plan to constrain and control journalists. A massive baby-sitting operation would ensure that no truly independent or uncensored reporting reached back to the US public. ‘News media representatives will be escorted at all times,’ the memo stated. ‘Repeat, at all times’… 
The overwhelming technological superiority of the US forces won a decisive victory in the brief and brutal war known as Desert Storm. Afterwards, some in the media quietly admitted that they'd been manipulated to produce sanitized coverage which almost entirely ignored the war's human costs, today estimated at over 100,000 civilian deaths. The American public's single most lasting memory of the war will probably be the ridiculously successful video stunts supplied by the Pentagon showing robot ‘smart bombs’ striking only their intended military targets, without much ‘collateral’ damage."
JACK O'DWYER"FARA Report." Volume 5, number 1. January, 1991.
"Craig L. Fuller, chief of staff to Bush when he was vice-president, has been on the Kuwaiti account at Hill & Knowlton since the first day. He and Dilenschneider at one point made a trip to Saudi Arabia, observing the production of some 20 videotapes, among other chores. The Wirthlin Group, research arm of H&K, was the pollster for the Reagan Administration… 
Wirthlin has reported receiving $1.1 million in fees for research assignments for the Kuwaitis. Robert K. Gray, Chairman of H&K/USA based in Washington, DC has leading roles in both Reagan campaigns. He has been involved in foreign nation accounts for many years…  
Lauri J. Fitz-Pegado, account supervisor on the Kuwait account, is a former Foreign Service Officer at the US Information Agency who joined Gray when he set up his firm in 1982." (pp 8, 10.) "Hill & Knowlton… has assumed a role in world affairs unprecedented for a PR firm. H&K has employed a stunning variety of opinion-forming devices and techniques to help keep US opinion on the side of the Kuwaitis...  
The techniques range from full-scale press conferences showing torture and other abuses by the Iraqis to the distribution of tens of thousand of 'Free Kuwait’ T-shirts and bumper stickers at colleges campuses across the US." (p. 1)
MICHAEL CRUPPERT. "My Dream and the Color of Suffering."
"In 1972, while I was attending UCLA, my closest friend on campus, Craig Fuller, surprised me one day. I had been interning in the Office of LAPD Chief Ed Davis and was committed to a career in law enforcement. I had taken a special interest in narcotics. Craig said to me about drugs: ‘It's just weeding out the gene pool.’ I sat in Craig's White House office in 1981 and complained of CIA drug dealing. Craig went on to become George Bush's Chief of Staff in 1985."
THE STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE OF THE US ARMY WAR COLLEGE.
"Iraqi Power and US Security in the Middle East." February, 1990. A study released almost a year before the outbreak of the Gulf War. "Baghdad should not be expected to deliberately provoke military confrontations with anyone. Its’ interests are best served now and in the immediate future by peace. Revenues from oil sales could put it in the front ranks of nations economically.  
A stable Middle East is conducive to selling oil; disruption has a long-range adverse effect on the oil market which would hurt Iraq. Force is only likely if the Iraqis feel seriously threatened. It is our belief that Iraq is basically committed to a non aggressive strategy, and that it will, over the course of the next few years, considerably reduce the size of its’ military. Economic conditions practically mandate such action.  
There seems no doubt that Iraq would like to demobilise now that the war [with Iran] has ended. The Ba’ath Party argue that they should be allowed to invest in economic recovery and industrialisation so that they can become productive again and pay off their debts." 
"Throughout the [Iran-Iraq] war the United States practised a fairly benign policy toward Iraq… Khomeini's revolutionary appeal was anathema to both Baghdad and Washington; hence they wanted to get rid of him. United by a common interest … the [US] began to actively assist Iraq." (http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2002/506/506p12.htm)
TARIQ AZIZ. Iraqi Foreign minister, later Deputy Prime Minister.
"I would like to tell you in all sincerity and seriousness that we would have no problems implementing legitimacy and the rules of justice and fairness if these principles were to be honoured with regard to all regional conflicts… However, we do not want to see these principles implemented with regard to a single issue….this would mean double standards were at work.  
If you are willing to work to achieve peace, justice, stability and security in the whole region, then you would find us at the forefront of those willing to co-operate with you in this regard." (In conversation with US Secretary of State James Baker in Geneva, 9th January 1991)
 Baker announced at the press conference afterwards:
"The conclusion is clear. Saddam Hussein continues to reject a diplomatic solution.")"Is it your aim to destroy Iraqi industry or implement resolution 687? If your aim is to carry out 687, then you have our approval. But if your objective is to annihilate Iraqi industry and deny Iraq the chance of becoming a prosperous industrial country, that would be a different matter." (Statement published in Baghdad newspapers in response to continued US threats of new attacks if Iraq fails to comply with weapons disclosure, October 1991) 
"The truth of the matter is that the government of Iraq has no role, however small, which allows it to respond to the allegations contained in claims. It is unable to give its’ legal and objective opinion on claims, even when those are exaggerated. The Compensation Commission decides which claims should be settled, who is authorised to submit a claim, what should be considered direct losses, and what constitutes sufficient proof… 
These measures create a legal screen which conceals the systematic subjugation of the Iraqi people. There are no reasonable grounds for this collective punishment of the Iraqi people. If this is not done [the verification of claims in accordance with international law and the rules of justice and equity] the compensation process will become simply an organised operation to strip the Iraqi people of their property, which they desperately need in order to rebuild their society and economy." (Expressing concerns about reparations/ compensations being paid to Kuwait from the proceeds of Resolution 986, in a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan, 27th May, 1998)
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