Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were relatively well documented at the time. Not the same could be said about the possibility that Saddam Hussein had or was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons. Demonization and character assassination are tools of the warring trade that has been immaculately perfected.
a) Chemical ordnances
Iraq had turned to chemical warfare in the last part of the Iraq-Iran war when the Iraqis were on the brink of being submerged by human waves of Iranian fighters, often teen-agers. The Reagan Administration turned a blind eye on, and winked at the Iraqi actions as the U.S. covertly supported the Iraqi regime in its endeavor to defeat the Iranians, fearing that the Ayatollahs (Khomeini & co.) would export their fundamentalist revolution to the entire Arabian Gulf Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, etc.). Iranians reciprocated, though to a lesser extent, until, exhausted, the two sides reached a cease-fire.
After the invasion of Kuwait, in August 1990, the Bush Administration began asserting that the Iraqi regime had gassed its own people in Northern Iraq (the Kurds). The administration was specifically pointing its finger to the Halabjah deadly gas attack in March 1988 (Halabjah is a Kurdish town in Northern Iraq), after the cease-fire had taken place. The event took place. Halabjah was gassed. What is not clear is which side did it. At the time, the Reagan administration suggested that the Iranians were the culprits. Upon careful consideration, analysts have come to the conclusion that the Iraqis were responsible for the attack. The town had been taken over by Iranian elite forces and it would have made little sense for their government to gas its own troops while, in all likelihood, the Iraqis had reasons to proceed with such a dire attack. The town, as said, had been taken over by the Iranians and some Kurd factions had allied themselves with Iran. The fact remains that to this day, there is no definite evidence of who did what. While logic might point into the Iraqi direction (see the analysis of Glen Rangwala on the CASI forum, at http://www.casi.org....2/msg00034.html) doubts linger. For example, Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that "Iranians also used poison gas at Halabjah and may have caused some of the casualties" (The Military Threat from Iraq, page 36). See also the March 2002 opinion of Anthony Arnove on Zmag, "Convenient And Not So Convenient Massacres," at http://www.zmag.org/...03/28arnove.cfm to get an idea of the selective use of these events by the US government.
[ed. The following two paragraphs were added on February 1, 2003.] The New York Times published a January 31, 2003 Op-Ed by Stephen C. Pelletiere who was the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000. According to Pelletiere who, in his words, "was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington," "[Saddam Hussein] has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war." (we append a relevant excerpt of this Op-Ed at the end of this dossier.)
Murky business, isn't it? Both Iran and Iraq violated the international chemical weapons treaty (as did the USA in Vietnam... Remember Agent Orange? Has the USA ever paid war reparations for using WMD in Vietnam?). But, Phyllis Bennis, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, writes in a primer, Understanding the U.S.-Iraq Crisis, that "One former Iraqi officer, General al-Shamari, told Newsweek that he was in charge of firing chemical weapons from howitzers against Iranian troops, and that U.S. satellite information provided the targeting information. A former CIA official confirmed to Newsweek that the U.S. provided military intelligence to Iraq, including on chemical warfare. General al-Shamari now lives safely in the U.S., running a restaurant outside of Washington DC." (See http://www.ips-dc.or...primer4.htm#33.) Murky business indeed!
Nuclear weapons The Bush administration and the main media made a relentless case about the dangers of seeing Iraq acquire nuclear weapons. Whether the Iraqi regime had procured them already, or was on the edge of acquiring them, was the object of intense debates and speculations. The bottom line was that the "civilized" world could not let such abominable weapons fall into the hands of a bloodthirsty dictator. Forget that the Iraqis had no way of delivering such a deadly weapon upon the continental United States. They could reach our friends and allies in the region, we were told. Forget that the Israelis, having concluded that the Iraqis were not truly a threat to the existence of their state, had taken no action (they did level the French-built Osirak nuclear plant in 1981), the Iraqi regime, personalized by Saddam Hussein, was deemed so "evil" that they would nuke the entire world. (Forget also that the Iraqis, during the Gulf War, did not use chemical weapons. They might have been "evildoers" but they certainly were not suicidal. See Tarik Aziz oral history on Frontline at http://www.pbs.org/w...al/aziz/1.html.) So, we will never know the true assessment of the Iraqi nuclear reality of that time. The U.S. Congress however -- and with the help of the incubators story -- needed no further explanation. Why? That's where, among other things, the demonization of Saddam Hussein played a big role.
c) Dehumanization and Demonization of the enemy
Another technique that has been refined over time; Public eye.org defines thus: "To understand scapegoating we must consider how we identify and perceive our enemies. A first step is marginalization, the processes whereby targeted individuals or groups are pictured (in the sense of being framed) as outside the circle of wholesome mainstream society. The next step is objectification or dehumanization, the process of negatively labeling a person or group of people so they become perceived more as objects rather than real people. Dehumanization often is associated with the belief that a particular group of people are inferior or threatening. The final step is demonization, the person or group is seen as totally malevolent, sinful, and evil. It is easier to rationalize stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, and even violence against those who are dehumanized or demonized.
Demonization fuels dualism -- a form of binary thinking that divides the world into good versus evil with no middle ground tolerated. Dualism allows no acknowledgment of complexity, nuance, or ambiguity in debates; and promotes hostility toward those who suggest coexistence, toleration, pragmatism, compromise, or mediation.
Aho observes that our notions of the enemy 'in our everyday life world,' is that the 'enemy's presence in our midst is a pathology of the social organism serious enough to require the most far-reaching remedies: quarantine, political excision, or, to use a particularly revealing, expression, liquidation and expulsion.'" (See, http://www.publiceye...goating-01.htm.)
The Bush administration played the phenomenon to the hilt. The American people fell for it.
The rest is history, which in the present, short and medium terms is and will be recorded by the same people who made up the deception in the first place. Long term history will once again be less delicate. But we will all be dead.
In the meantime Gulf War II will have taken place, following the same patterns...and to what results?
http://www.swans.com...art8/ga138.html
