AMERICA & IRAQ: A BLACK HOLE OF HISTORY

The last thing the U.S. should do is become militarily embroiled in the conflict raging again in Iraq. But for Americans to shake their heads in lofty disdain and turn away, as if they have no responsibility for the continued bloodletting, is outrageous. Why? Because America bears a large part of the blame for turning Iraq into the basket case it’s become.

The great majority of Americans don’t realize that fact. They never did. So much of what the U.S. did to Iraq has been consigned by America to a black hole of history. Iraqis, however, can never forget.   

In 1990, for instance, during the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush, called on the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein. But when they finally did, after Saddam’s forces were driven from Kuwait, President Bush refused any gesture of support, even permitted Saddam’s pilots to keep flying their deadly helicopter gunships. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were slaughtered.  

[H.W. Bush later denied any responsibility for that uprising, but you can hear his appeal to the Iraqis in a documentary I produced with Michel Despratx, “The Trial of Saddam Hussein.”]

Even more devastating to Iraq was the Draconian  embargo  that the United States and its allies pushed through the U.N. Security Council in August 1990, after Saddam invaded Kuwait.

The embargo cut off all trade between Iraq and the rest of the world. That meant everything, from food and electric generators to vaccines, hospital equipment—even medical journals. Since Iraq imported 70 percent of its food, and its principal revenues were derived from the export of petroleum, the sanctions dealt a catastrophic blow, particularly to the young.  

Enforced primarily by the United States and Britain, the sanctions remained in place for almost 13 years and were, in their own way, a weapon of mass destruction far more deadly than anything Saddam had developed. Two U.N. administrators who oversaw humanitarian relief in Iraq during that period, and resigned in protest, considered the embargo to have been a “crime against humanity.”

Early on, it became evident that for the United States and England, the real purpose of the sanctions was not the elimination of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, but of Saddam Hussein himself, though that goal went far beyond anything authorized by the Security Council.

The effect of the sanctions was magnified by the wide-scale destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure —power plants, sewage treatment facilities, telephone exchanges, irrigation systems—wrought by the American air and rocket attacks preceding the first Gulf War. That infrastructure has still to be completely rebuilt.

Iraq’s contaminated waters became a biological killer as lethal as anything Saddam had attempted to produce. There were massive outbreaks of severe child and infant dysentery. Typhoid and cholera, which had been virtually eradicated in Iraq, also packed the hospital wards.

Added to that was a disastrous shortage of food, which meant malnutrition for some, starvation and death for others. At the same time, the medical system, once the country’s pride, careened toward total collapse. Iraq would soon have the worst child mortality rate of all 188 countries measured by UNICEF.

There is no question that U.S. planners knew how awful the force of the sanctions would be.  In fact, the health calamity was coolly predicted and then meticulously tracked by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. Its first study was entitled “Iraq’s Water Treatment Vulnerabilities.”

Indeed, from the beginning, the intent of U.S. officials was to create such a catastrophic situation that the people of Iraq—civilians, but particularly the military—would be forced to react. As Denis Halliday, the former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, put it to me, “the U.S. theory behind the sanctions was that if you hurt the people of Iraq and kill the children particularly, they’ll rise up with anger and overthrow Saddam.”  

 But rather than weakening Saddam, the sanctions only consolidated his hold on power. “The people didn’t hold Saddam responsible for their plight,” Halliday said. “They blamed the U.S. and the U.N. for these sanctions and the pain and anger that these sanctions brought to their lives.”

 Even after the sanctions were modified in the "Oil for Food Program" in 1996, the resources freed up were never enough to cover Iraq’s basic needs. Hans von Sponeck, who also resigned his post as U.N. coordinator in Iraq, condemned the program as “a fig leaf for the international community.”

By1999 a UNICEF study concluded that half a million Iraqi children perished in the previous eight years because of the sanctions—and that was four years before they ended. Another American expert in 2003 estimated that the sanctions killed between 343,900 and 529,000 young children and infants--certainly more young people than were ever killed by Saddam Hussein.

 Beyond the deaths and wholesale destruction, the sanctions had another equally devastating but less visible impact, as documented early on by a group of Harvard medical researchers. They reported that four out of five children interviewed were fearful of losing their families; two-thirds doubted whether they themselves would survive to adulthood. They were  “the most traumatized children of war ever described.” 

 The experts concluded that “a majority of Iraq’s children would suffer from severe psychological problems throughout their lives.”

 Much more chilling, is the fact that the Harvard study was done in 1991, after the sanctions had been in effect for only seven months. They would continue for another 12 years, until May 22, 2003, after the U.S.-led invasion.

 By then, an entire generation of Iraqis had been ravaged. But rather than bringing that nightmare to an end, the invasion unleashed another series of horrors. Estimates of Iraqis who died over the following years, directly or indirectly due to the savage violence, range up to 400,000. Millions more became refugees.

But there was more. The military onslaught and the American rule that immediately followed, destroyed not just the people and infrastructure of Iraq, but the very fiber of the nation.  Though Saddam’s tyranny was ruthless, over the years the country’s disparate peoples had begun living together as Iraqis, in the same towns and neighborhoods, attending the same schools, intermarrying—slowly developing a sense of nationhood.

That process was shattered by the American proconsuls who took charge after the invasion. They oversaw a massive political purge, a witch hunt, that led to the gutting of key ministries, the collapse of the police and military and other key government institutions, without creating any viable new structures in their place. The Shiites who the U.S. helped bring to power took revenge on the Sunnis, many of whom had backed Saddam.

The result was catastrophic. Frightened Iraqis turned for security to their own tribal or sectarian leaders. Local militias flourished. The violence spiraled out of control. Thousands perished in a horrific surge of ethnic cleansing.

Through bribery and political arm twisting, the U.S. was able to tamp down the conflagration it had helped ignite. Underneath, however, the distrust and hatred  continued smoldering.

And then, in 2011, the U.S. troops pulled out. President Maliki continued pouring oil on the fire, refusing to give Sunnis and Kurds a share of power. And now, fed by the conflict in neighboring Syria, Iraq is once again caught up in bloody turmoil.   

And who is having to deal with all this?  The generation of Iraqis that the Harvard researchers had long labeled “the most traumatized children of war ever described.” The majority of whom “would suffer from severe psychological problems throughout their lives.”

It is they now, who have come of age. It is they who, if they have not fled the country, are the military and police commanders, the businessmen and bureaucrats and newspaper editors, the tribal chiefs and sectarian leaders, the imans and jihadis and suicide bombers--all of them now still caught up in the ever-ending calamity of Iraq.

That, America, is the legacy you helped create in Iraq. How do you deal with it now?

God only knows. 

U.S. President "Betrays" Arab Uprising-Again (Part 1)

(A rewrite of the blog I had earlier posted under this title--splitting it in half--to make it easier to digest for my readers--as well as to draw more attention to the question--raised in Part Two--about Saddam's possible use of CW in 1991, which the U.S. may have chosen to ignore). 

{C}{C}

An American president calls for the downfall of an Arab dictator. The people rise up. The revolt spreads across the country. The rebels ask for help from the American president…who, no longer a fan of revolution, turns his back and----as the rebels see it—betrays them.

Could be Syria September 2013. Could also be Iraq 1991, when an uprising of Shiites and Kurds threatened to topple Saddam Hussein.

There are, of course, differences, between the two calamities. Still what happened in Iraq back then, provides tragic perspective to the continuing cataclysm in Syria today.

In Syria, in 2011, in the wake of a popular revolt, Barack Obama called on Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad to step down. That was followed by a lot of encouraging talk, a trade embargo, and some clandestine aid from America, though no serious supply of arms. Mea

nwhile, America’s supposed allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, provided funds and some weapons to the rebels.

Now, after the flurry of negotiations over Assad’ chemical weapons, no one know—including probably Obama himself--what kind of support (if any) the U.S. will be giving to the rebels going forward.  They feel, understandably, left in the lurch. Their country meanwhile is a bloody basket case.

As for Iraq, in February 1991, as American forces were driving Saddam's troops out of Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush, called for the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow the dictator.

Despite subsequent denials from the U.S., that message was repeatedly broadcast across Iraq. [You can actually hear it on the excerpt of the documentary I did in 2003] It was also contained in millions of leaflets dropped by the U.S. Air Force.

Eager to end decades of repression, the Shiites arose. Their revolt spread like wildfire; in the north, the Kurds also rose up. Key Iraqi army units joined in. It looked as if Saddam's days were over.

But then George H. W. Bush blew the whistle. Things had got out of hand. What Bush had wanted was not a messy popular uprising but a neat military coup -- another strongman more amenable to Western interests. The White House feared that turmoil would give the Iranians increased influence, upset the Turks, wreak havoc throughout the region.

But the Bush administration didn't just turn its back on the revolt; it actually aided Saddam to suppress the Intifada.

When Saddam's brutal counter-attack against the rebellions began, the order was given to American troops already deep inside Iraq and armed to the teeth not to assist the rebellion in any way -- though everyone knew that they were condemning the Intifada to an awful defeat. Thanks to their high-flying reconnaissance planes, U.S. commanders would observe the brutal process as it occurred.

At the time, Rocky Gonzalez was a Special Forces warrant officer serving with U.S. troops in southern Iraq.  From their base, Rocky and his units watched as Saddam's forces launched their counterattack against the rebels. Thousands of people fled toward the American lines, said Gonzalez. “One of the refugees was waving a leaflet that had been dropped by U.S. planes over Iraq. Those leaflets told them to rise up against the regime and free themselves."

"They weren't asking us to fight. They felt they could do that themselves. Basically they were just saying 'we rose up like you asked us, now give us some weapons and arms to fight.'"

The American forces had huge stocks of weapons they had captured from the Iraqis. But they were ordered to blow them up rather than turn them over to the rebels.In his autobiography, General Schwarzkopf, without giving details, alludes to the fact that the American-led coalition aided Saddam to crush the uprising

Indeed, Saddam's former intelligence chief, General Wafiq al-Samarrai, later recounted that the government forces had almost no ammunition left when they finally squelched the revolt.

Iraqi survivors of the Intifada also told my French reporter associate, Michel Despratx, that U.S. forces actually prevented them from marching on Baghdad. "One of the American soldiers threatened to kill us if we didn't turn back," he said. Another Shiite leader claimed that the U.S. even provided Saddam's Republican Guards with fuel. The Americans, he charged, disarmed some resistance units and allowed Republican Guard tanks to go through their checkpoints to crush the uprising.

"We let one Iraqi division go through our lines to get to Basra because the United States did not want the regime to collapse," said Middle East expert Wiliam Quandt.

U.S. officials declined even to meet with the Shiite rebels to hear their case.

In other words, the U.S. position back then was not that different from the fear in the Obama administration that radical forces, linked to Al Qaeda, will take power if Assad were to fall.  

Continued in part two.

U.S. President "Betrays" Arab Uprising-Again (Part 2)

Did the U.S. in 1991 help cover-up Saddam’s CW?

Continued from part 1

In 1991, after first exhorting Iraqis to overthrow Saddam Hussein, President George H.W. Bush, became fearful that the Shiites, whose rebellion had spread like wildfire, were too closely tied to Iran. He ordered American troops then in Iraq to refuse any aid. He also continued to allow Saddam’s military to fly their deadly helicopter strikes.

Bush’s decision turned the tide. Saddam, who had been on the brink of defeat, unleashed fearsome attacks against the rebels. What has not been reported is that those attacks may also have included the use of chemical weapons-- according to Rocky Gonzalez an American soldier I interviewed for a documentary on the subject, who was stationed just a few miles away.

"You could see there were helicopters crisscrossing the skies, going back and forth," he told me. "Within a few hours people started showing up at our perimeter with chemical burns. “' We were guessing mustard gas. They had blisters and burns on their face and on their hands, on places where the skin was exposed," he said. "As the hours passed, more and more people were coming.”

Indeed, one of the greatest concerns of coalition forces during Desert Storm had been that Saddam would unleash his WMD. U.S. officials repeatedly warned Iraq that America's response would be immediate and devastating. Facing such threats, Saddam kept his weapons holstered -- or so the Bush administration led the world to believe.

Rocky's suspicion that Saddam did resort to them in 1991 was later confirmed by the report of the U.S. Government's Iraq Survey Group, which investigated Saddam's WMD after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and concluded that Saddam no longer had any WMD. Almost universally ignored by the media, however, was the finding that Saddam had resorted to his WMD during the 1991 uprising. The "regime was shaking and wanted something 'very quick and effective' to put down the revolt."

They considered then rejected using mustard gas, as it would be too perceptible with U.S. troops close by. Instead, on March 7th, 1991 the Iraqi military filled R-400 aerial bombs with sarin, a binary nerve agent. "Dozens of sorties were flown against Shiite rebels in Kerbala and the surrounding areas," the ISG report said. But apparently the R-400 bombs were not very effective, having been designed for high-speed delivery from planes, not slow-moving helicopters. So the Iraqi military switched to dropping CS, a very potent tear gas, in large aerial bombs.

Because of previous U.S. warnings against resorting to chemical weapons, Saddam and his generals knew they were taking a serious risk, but the Coalition never reacted.

The lingering question is why? It's impossible to believe they didn't know about it at the time. There were repeated charges from Shiite survivors that the Iraqi dictator had used chemical weapons. Rocky Gonzalez said he heard from refugees that nerve gas was being used. He had also observed French-made Iraqi helicopters -- one of which was outfitted as a crop sprayer -- making repeated bomb runs over Najaf. Gonzalez maintained that, contrary to what the ISG report said, many of the refugees who fled to U.S. lines were indeed victims of mustard gas. "Their tongues were swollen," he said, "and they had severe burns on the mucous tissue on the inside of their mouths and nasal passages. Our chemical officer also said it looked like mustard gas."

Gonzalez suggested that local Iraqi officials, desperate to put down the uprising, may have used mustard gas without permission from on high. "A lot of that was kept quiet," he said, "because we didn't want to panic the troops. We stepped up our training with gas masks, because we were naturally concerned."

Gonzalez's unit also passed their information on to their superiors. There were other American witnesses to what happened. U.S. helicopters and planes flew overhead, patrolling as Saddam's helicopters decimated the rebels. Some of those aircraft provided real-time video of the occurrences below.

On March 7th, Secretary of State James Baker warned Saddam not to resort to chemical weapons to repress the uprising. But why, when the U.S. was notified that the Iraqi dictator actually had resorted to chemical weapons, was there no forceful reaction from the administration of the elder Bush? One plausible explanation--denouncing Saddam for using chemical weapons would have greatly increased pressure on the U.S. President to come to the aid of the Shiites.

As James Baker put it—in Kissingerian terms--“We don’t want to see a power vacuum in Iraq.”

Instead, the American decision to turn their backs on the Intifada gave a green light to Saddam Hussein's ruthless counterattack. The repression when it came was as horrendous as everyone knew it would be. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were massacred. In the North, however, because of media coverage, the U.S. was finally obliged to decree a no-fly zone, thus protecting the Kurds. In the South, however, where there were no TV cameras, the slaughter of the Shiites continued

Meanwhile, anonymous government figures, wise in the ways of Realpolitik, were making statements such as, "It is far easier to deal with a tame Saddam Hussein than with an unknown quantity." [One can imagine the same sentiments today from American editorialists and statesmen]

Imagine if, instead of blocking the Intifada, George H.W. Bush had given a green light -- without even sending American troops to Baghdad -- just sent the needed signals: met with rebel leaders, ordered Saddam to stop flying his helicopter gunships.
Indeed, some in the Bush administration, like Paul Wolfowitz, were recommending that he do just that: support the revolt he had called for.

They were overruled.

Granted, if the revolution had been successful, there would have been a period of tumult. The Kurds might have achieved an autonomous or semi autonomous state, which is what they will wind up with. The Iranians would have certainly increased their influence through their Shiite allies, but no more than they have today.

There would also have been no American invasion and disastrous occupation of Iraq in 2003.

And, without that sorry backdrop, it’s also likely that the Obama administration would have been much more open to aiding the rebels in Syria-- early on in 2011, before more radical elements became involved.

And that could have made all the difference. 

Barry Lando is author of the mystery novel, “The Watchman’s File” about Israel’s most-closely guarded secret (it’s not the bomb.) Available at Amazon.

Why Did Syria Want CW Anyway?

An air of inanity pervades the debate about Syria—obscuring the underlying fears and motives, the real forces behind a surrealistic, blood-soaked drama worthy of Kafka, Ionesco, or Pinter.

It’s evident, for instance, that the 800-pound guerrilla hovering behind the debate is Israel and its American backers, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington.

What has not been made clear is that, lurking in the background, is another shadowy hulking presence: Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity, which—as I’ve previously blogged--Israel has never officially acknowledged and most U.S. administrations have done their best to ignore. As have the mainstream press and the gaggle of statesmen, commentators and “experts” with weighty proposals on how to resolve the current crisis.

For instance, Senator Joe Manchin III, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, would give Bashar al-Assad 45 days to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and begin ridding the country of its weapons stockpiles. Only if Assad refuses would the American president be authorized to take military action.

“We need some options out there that does something about the chemical weapons,” Mr. Manchin said. “That’s what’s missing right now.”

That proposal, however, comes across as hopelessly naïve when you understand why Syria’s leaders opted for chemical weapons in the first place.  

It was not with the intention of deploying CW against their own people. It was instead an attempt to develop an affordable and meaningful deterrent to Israel’s daunting military might, particularly to Israel’s nuclear capability.

That’s the bottom line of several serious studies of Syria’s weapons program, done over the past few years by American and other experts. As a study published by the European Union’s non-proliferation consortium in July 2012, concluded, “Syria’s CWs are not tactical or battlefield weapons, but rather a strategic deterrence against Israel’s conventional superiority and its nuclear weapons arsenal.IWhile Israeli leaders have always portrayed their country as an embattled David, confronting an existential threat from an Arab –and now,Iranian—Goliath, Syria’s perspective has been totally different.  

As the rulers in Damascus have seen it, Israel, thanks to its sophisticated industrial base,  and unwavering financial and political support from the United States, has been able to develop by far the most powerful military forces in the region—with its own nuclear trump card.  

The Syrians, on the other hand, have suffered one humiliating setback after another, from the failure to defeat Israel in 1948, to Israel’s on-going occupation of the Golan Heights, which they took in 1967, to Israel’s repeated forays into South Lebanon.

The Syrians, however, came to realize they could never equal Israel’s military might.  They opted instead for a practical alternative: chemical weapons. If not strategic parity, CW would at least give Syria, if the chips were down, a fearful enough weapon to brandish against Israel’s nuclear capabilities.

As the European Union’s study said, “With meager resources, an inadequate military culture and a weakening, less-than-reliable Soviet patron, Syria was in no position to maintain its policy of conventional parity. That became amply clear at the turn of the 1990s, when Syria approached economic bankruptcy, witnessed the collapse of the USSR and had to adapt to rising US influence in the region.”

Syria’s determination to maintain its chemical arsenal could only have increased after 2007 when Israeli planes bombed what was apparently a Syrian attempt to construct a nuclear reactor.

One Israeli analyst claimed that  CWs and associated delivery systems became, for lack of better options, the ‘core’ of Syria’s security strategy, a ‘wild card’ that would create enough uncertainty in the minds of Israeli decision makers to prevent an escalation of an existential nature.

Another analyst who has a unique view of Syria’s CW strategy is  M. Zuhair Diab, an international security analyst now living in London. From 1981 to 1985 he was a diplomat with the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As he put it in a study in 1997.

“Syria seeks to neutralize Israel’s ability to employ nuclear blackmail to coerce it into accepting unfavorable conditions for a peace settlement. Syria’s increased bargaining leverage with Israel as result of its CW capability has been demonstrated by Israel’s inability to dictate its terms in the peace negotiations between the two sides. Indeed, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recognized that a condition ofstrategic stalemate had emerged between Israel and Syria.”

Syria has not signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. Whenever the issue comes up, Syria’s leaders have invariably cited Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and the fact that Israel refused to sign the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In other words, Syria is not going to unilaterally lay down its most potent weapon.

Think what you will of the men governing Syria, but how can Israel or its American backers, answer that argument? Particularly if they still refuse to admit officially that Israel even has nukes?

The analysis of Syria’s CW program by the former Syrian diplomat, was written in 1997, 14 years before the outbreak of the civil war which is currently ripping apart his country. At that time, according to him, there were only two realistic scenarios for Syrian tactical use of CW. They both involved defending against Israel.

“1) if Israel launches an offensive involving first use of CW, forcing Syrian units to retaliate in-kind; or 2) if the defensive perimeter of Damascus, the Syrian capital, (italics added) collapses as a result of an Israeli incursion through the Golan Heights or a flanking maneuver through the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.”

With the existence of the Assad regime now at stake, the Syrian military’s doctrines on whom they might target with CW may have changed. But not the trip wire that might provoke them to unleash CW: a serious threat to the Syrian capital.

What is striking about the study from the former Syrian diplomat I’ve just cited is the fact that, according to some sources, the reason that Syrian military units may have resorted to CW on August 21, was as a desperate measure to drive rebel forces from a strategically key suburb of Damascus.