Month: December 2006

Farzad Barzoft was hanged on Saddam’s orders after a phony confession of spying extorted by torture, and the promise of a pardon.  Let’s not forget, either, the assassination attempt on Shlomo Argov, the Israeli Ambassador in London in June 1982, that predictably led to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the expulsion of the PLO — Saddam wanted to punish the Palestinians for trying to mediate an end to the Iran-Iraq war.  The 148 men and boys of Dujail were a few of Saddam’s many victims.  We cannot forget other Iraqis, including the Kurds, or the Iranian casualties in the crazy, completly lunatic Iran-Iraq war that no one seriously tried to stop — American, and Western European, policy is over-digified by the use of a political-science-type term of “dual containment”, for what it meant, colloquially, was that neither side should be allowed to win, and what it meant practically was let both sides kill as many of the other as possible.

Today, Belgian politician (is he still Foreign Minister?) Louis Michel told the BBC that hanging Saddam was “barbaric”, and that his execution was totally contrary to European values.  (Louis Michel threw out a court case brought against Israel’s Ariel Sharon, under “universal jurisdiction” powers conferred by the UN Convention on Genocide, by Palestinian survivors of the 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps that took place almost under Sharon’s nose, and for which an Israeli judge found he had “personal responsibilty”.)

Not in any way am I saying that Iraqi or Iranian victims of Saddam’s rule are somehow less important, or less sympathetic, than foreign or Western-linked victims, but, for purposes of comparison and perspective, let us just recall the following:

On Farzad Barzoft (Iranian-born and British-accredited — Iraq’s two greatest historic enemies, in Iraqi eyes) : “Farzad Bazoft was a reporter who, on an invited trip to Iraq, went to a weapons plant in pursuit of a story of all his colleagues were chasing. There is no serious evidence that he was there for any other purpose. He made no secret of his intentions to his colleagues or his hosts. The Iraqi authorities produced no proof of espionage, other than ‘confessions’ clearly extracted from a man under intolerable pressure and fear for his life. They do not stand up to even cursory inspection.  He died a horrible death without a fair trial or appeal…The MPs who have used their privileged position to give substance to Iraqi propaganda in favour of this barbarity without any proof – Mr Rupert Allason, Conservative MP for Torbay, Mr Anthony Beaumont-Dark, Conservative MP for Selly Oak, and most despicable of all, Mr Terry Dicks, Conservative MP for Hayes and Harlington (who made a public statement the day before Farzad’s execution that he ‘deserved to be hanged’ and thereby justified the savage act) – have demeaned their office and shamed themselves as responsible human beings. To dance on an innocent man’s grave in this way beggars civilised description. The newspapers that gave credence to their views are little better.  In any other country Farzad would be alive today to proclaim his innocence, to cross-examine witnesses through a lawyer of his own choice and then to appeal against any sentence. Instead he was denied all these rights and finally deprived of the right to life itself. Worse, in death he has had to suffer contemptible, unsupported innuendo to which he can no longer reply…The Farzad who was forced to ‘confess’ to spying after seven weeks incommunicado, the Farzad who was hustled out of a court a week ago without hearing his death sentence translated into English and who had still not been told that the sentence was confirmed when the British consul visited him on his last morning, was a fond, flawed and frightened human being.”  http://observer.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,6903,958172,00.html

I was reminded, after a google search now, that Farzad Barzoft was hung in Abu Ghraib prison.  

There are reports claiming that Barzoft knew an Iraqi in London who was really a Mossad handler, but that does not necessarily mean he was spying (probably a lot of people, wittingly or unwittingly, know Mossad handlers), not does it constitute any kind of proof of anything.

I also recall that it was said that Saddam found Margaret Thatcher’s call for Barzoft’s releast to be imperious and insulting.  Barzoft was executed to show her! 

After the execution, Farzad Barzoft’s body was unceremoniously unloaded from the back of a truck and thrown over the wall into the British consular compound in Baghdad.  

On 18 May 2003, after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and occupation of Iraq, Farhad Bazoft’s former editor at the London Observer, Donald Trelford, wrote in the Observer:  “MInutes before his execution as a spy at 6.30am on Thursday 15 March 1990, Farzad Bazoft said to Robin Kealy, the British consul general in Baghdad: ‘I was just a journalist going after a scoop’…It was Farzad’s tragedy that he arrived in Iraq on the same day that a major explosion was reported at a military complex south of the capital. He was there as a freelance, invited by the Iraqi government to witness elections in Kurdistan. Although born in Iran, he had been invited to Iraq as a journalist five times before.  Like other journalists on the trip, he wanted to visit the site of the blast, in which 700 people were said to have died, to check if it was a nuclear accident. He got approval from the Iraqi Foreign Office, who said they would send him a car. When it didn’t show up, he arranged for a friend, the British nurse Daphne Parish, to drive him to the site, where he took soil samples outside the perimeter fence.  When he returned to Baghdad, he told fellow journalists about his finds – hardly the action of a spy – and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade one of them to take them back to London for analysis. He was on his way home himself when he was arrested, held for six weeks in solitary confinement, then paraded before television cameras on 1 November, looking drugged and emaciated, to ‘confess’ to spying for Israel.  The Observer campaigned non-stop for his release. I saw the Iraqi ambassador several times, but it became clear that Farzad was being held by Saddam’s private security forces and lay beyond the reach of their Foreign Office – a fact later confirmed to me by their Deputy Foreign Minister on a visit to London. We were not allowed to send a lawyer to his trial; the lawyer appointed for him in Baghdad had one day’s notice and was not allowed to call witnesses, such as the other journalists on the trip, who had sworn statements on his behalf.  There was worldwide support for our campaign. Edward Heath and John Wakeham raised the case on visits to Baghdad. The European Union had planned a meeting for 17 March, at which they were expected to threaten to break off trade with Iraq; ironically, that may have hastened his death, for the execution was unexpectedly brought forward two days.  A plea on Farzad’s behalf by Margaret Thatcher may have been counter-productive, for the first words of the Iraqi Information Minister when he announced the execution were: ‘Thatcher wanted him alive. We sent him home in a box’.  Parts of the British press were not helpful. The Sunday Telegraph virtually accused me of murder for sending Farzad ‘into the slaughter-house’. Far from sending him – he was a freelance responding to a personal invitation – I didn’t even know he had gone until we heard of his arrest.  The Mail on Sunday said Farzad had been paid for spying on the Iraqi ‘super gun’ – a story shown later to have been based on forged documents. Rupert Allason, the Conservative MP, said Farzad was clearly a spy because the name of an Israeli businessman, Jacob Nimrodi, was found in his address book. Yet I had given Farzad this contact personally…Stories were leaked that Farzad had a criminal record and had contacts with Special Branch, which was formally denied by the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd.
Donald Trelford was editor of The Observer when Farzad Bazoft was executed. He is now a writer and broadcaster and visiting professor in journalism studies at Sheffield University.  http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,958275,00.html

Another article also published on 18 May 2003 in the Observer proclaimed: Writer hanged by Iraq ‘no spy’.  Ed Vulliamy, reporting from Nasiriyah, Iraq, wrote: “Farzad Bazoft, the Observer journalist hanged on the orders of Saddam Hussein 13 years ago, was innocent, according to the man who arrested and interrogated him.  Kadem Askar, a former colonel in the Iraqi intelligence service, last night admitted he knew Bazoft was not a spy, as was alleged at the time by the Iraqis.  But he claimed he was powerless to intervene to save his life.  The reporter was executed on 15 March 1990, on the instructions of Saddam, he said.  The admission by Askar – whom The Observer traced to his house in Nasiriyah in southern Iraq – provides final proof that Bazoft’s family, friends and colleagues were right and that the reporter was innocent of the spying charges against him.  ‘My son was only doing his job,’ Farzad’s father, Sowaini, said last night. ‘He was not a spy. He was killed by a man who never had any regard for life or law. It is just a shame that the rest of the world took so long to wake up to that fact when they could have done something to my son’s life.’   Bazoft was arrested on Askar’s orders in September 1989, after photographing a military installation at which an explosion had occurred.  He was investigating reports that 700 people had been killed by the blast.  During his interrogation of Bazoft, in which the reporter was beaten, Askar said he discovered among his belongings 34 pictures of military installations on a roll of film.  ‘It was a dangerous thing to do, but I could see clearly from examining the film that Bazoft was not a spy. No spy would take such pictures.  It was obvious that he was just trying to get a story.  The things he shot were of no use to anyone; nowhere near as much use as what could have been got from any satellite picture.’  Askar – once a robust figure but now thin and haggard – lives in a relatively prosperous area of Nasiriyah.  ‘Bazoft was obviously innocent,’ he told The Observer.  ‘I could tell that he was simply chasing a story. And I submitted my report saying that.’  But orders came from Saddam Hussein that Bazoft was a spy for the Israelis and British.  ‘Once Saddam took that position, there was nothing I could do to help this young man.’  Askar was told the Bazoft case was his chance to leave the security services to return to the military – if he refrained from challenging Saddam.  ‘So I submitted my report after the single day of interrogation, and left it at that.  ‘I have bad feelings about it now, yes. These things hurt me, as a human being with children. I knew this man was innocent, and I feel bad that there was nothing I could do to help him.’ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,958539,00.html

On Shlomo Argov: First, I am not compelled but I must say that I feel rather less sympathy, on anything other than a purely human level, for an Israeli diplomat whose first priority is to represent his country’s interest, right or wrong.  I did not know Shlomo Argov, and do not know if he truly had any interest in an eventual peace with the Palestinians — as some suggestions hint.  But, this man was a real fall guy.  The assassination attempt that made him an invalid for over two decades was not really aimed at him — it was more like throwing a bowling ball down the alley to take down a number of other pins.

Shlomo Argov was shot on Iraqi orders, in order to get back at Palestinians for trying to mediate an end to the Iran-Iraq war.  At a Non-Aligned meeting in Havana in June 1982, I was told by seething Iraqi diplomats that they were going to “punish” the Palestinians.  At the week-long conference in Havana, a Palestinian delegation led by Farouk Kaddoumi was trying to mediate.  The Cuban government was also sort of helping in the mediation, sort of. (Two pillars of the Non-Aligned Movement, Cuba and Yugoslavia, had a serious rivalry, and would undermine each other at every opportunity.  Yugoslavia, like most of the international community, was backing Iraq.  Cuba doesn’t like any Muslim theocrats, but they must have sensed that Saddam had curious support from the U.S. and other Nato powers and allies.)  Iraq thought that all Arabs had a duty to back them against Iran — and Iraq was furious that the P.L.O. had some kind of admiration for Iran’s Islamic Revolution (Arafat, the Fatah leader, was both denounced and admired within the P.L.O. for his advocacy of strict adherence to Muslim correct behavior.  He regularly ordered punishments for Fatah drinkers, and he was regularly disobeyed in this respect – there were few better consumers of Johnnie Walker Red or Black than they, at the time!)

There were, apparently, three persons in the hit-squad that shot Shlomo Argov; two bullets were fired, and only one hit him. 

By contrast, the very lamented Naim Khader, P.L.O. representative in Brussels, was shot by his assassins five times in the head, and once in the heart, as he left his home in the spring of 1981 — his crime was his painstaking work with the Europeans on an initiative to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Until today, I mistakenly thought Shlomo Argov was still alive, and being cared for in a long-care facility in Israel.  But, I have just found, through another google search, that he apparently died in late February 2003 – just before the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Kuwait that overthrew Saddam.   But, I’ve just gotten confirmation not only of his death but also of my fall-guy belief from an obituary I’ve just seen, published in the London newspaper, the Guardian, on 25 February 2003:  “Shlomo Argov, Israel’s former ambassador to Britain, has died from wounds he received nearly 21 years ago in the London terrorist attack that triggered Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. He was 73.  On June 3 1982, Argov was getting into his car after a banquet at the Dorchester hotel in Park lane when three gunmen from the Abu Nidal group appeared from nowhere; one of them, Hussein Ghassan Said, fired a single bullet straight through his head. The ambassador fell into a three-month coma, and somehow survived, but was paralysed and required constant medical attention for the rest of his life.   Not since the slaying of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 has a hit team made war such a likely outcome. At last, the then Israeli defence minister Ariel Sharon had a pretext for his long-planned campaign to eliminate the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and its headquarters in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. In his memoirs, Sharon admits that the Dorchester ambush was ‘merely the spark that lit the fuse’.  The next day, Israeli forces bombed PLO arms depots in Lebanon, Palestinian forces retaliated with cross-border Katyusha rocket salvos, and, barely 48 hours later, Israel launched its ill-fated Operation Peace For Galilee. At first, the invasion routed the enemy. But before long, Israelis were fighting in the streets of Beirut itself; and, as civilian casualties mounted, international opprobrium grew.  To make matters worse, within a year Israel faced an additional new foe on its northern border, the indigenous Shi’ite militia Hizbollah. Ultimately, Israeli troops found themselves mired in a foreign country for 18 years.  Precisely what motivated the Dorchester shooting remains a mystery. Far from being PLO agents, it appears that the Palestinian gunmen, eventually convicted, were next planning to kill Nabil Ramlawi, the PLO representative in London.  The terrorist organiser Abu Nidal (obituary, August 20 2002) [n.b. – he was killed in Iraq, and surely on Saddam’s orders] was clearly behind the attack – one of the assailants still incarcerated in Britain was his cousin, Marwan al-Banna.  By targeting Argov, wrote the author Samuel Katz, Abu Nidal wanted to ‘provoke an Israeli assault on Arafat’s fortress, and thereby weaken his two most bitter enemies’. But the terrorists’ Iraqi paymasters – the third of Argov’s would-be assassins, Nawaf al-Rosan, was a Baghdad intelligence colonel – also sought to embroil Israel in a war with Syria that would divert attention from their own reversals in the Iran-Iraq conflict.  Such nefarious international manoeuvres still sadly overshadow the story of a life cut down in its prime.  Argov’s former deputy, Victor Harel, called him a ‘diplomatic giant and perfectionist’. Another friend and colleague, Elyakim Rubinstein, now Israel’s attorney-general, described him as ‘among the most distinguished and impressive in the foreign service’.  Respected for his eloquence, frankness and calm sense of purpose – and a brilliant linguist at ease in English, Spanish or Hebrew – Argov was often cited as a future peacemaker.  In a rare moment of lucidity during two decades as a bed-bound invalid, he lambasted the invasion of Lebanon triggered by the attempt on his life. ‘Israel cannot get entangled in experiments or hopeless military adventures,’ he said in July 1983.  ‘If those who initiated this war in Lebanon had envisioned the scope of this adventure, it could have saved the lives of hundreds of our best young people.’  Argov was born into a family that had lived in Jerusalem for six generations. He took a BA in political science at Georgetown University, Washington, after serving in the Israel defence forces from 1947 to 1950. He also worked part-time at the Israeli embassy in Washington, where he met his future wife, Hava. The couple honeymooned in Scotland in 1953, and maintained a love for the British way of life.  Hava nursed Shlomo during his long sojourn at the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, but predeceased him last year… Putting the case for his country regularly involved Argov in controversy: shortly before he was shot, he was compelled to deny reports that Israel had supplied arms to Argentina during the Falklands conflict. [He published a] collection of his speeches and writings, An Ambassador Speaks Out (1983). Along with the numerous communal lodges and Israeli academic fellowships named in his honour, the book speaks of a career that might have been…Shlomo Argov, diplomat, born December 14 1929; died February 23 2003. http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,902219,00.html

Of course, not only Israelis were killed in Sharon’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon — unknown numbers (many thousands) of Lebanese and Palestinians also died, Yasser Arafat and his Fatah fighters — trapped by the IDF onslaught, but nonetheless accused of hiding behind civilian skirts –were expelled from Lebanon and left on a chartered Greek boat under UN flag, while an angry Palestinian reexamination of their national movement continues to this day.

Despite the harm Saddam thus inflicted on Palestinians — who also later numbered among the many casualties of Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and of Kuwaiti reprisals — many Palestinians were gladdened by Saddam’s defiance of UN Security Council orders to withdraw, and by his miserable couple of volleys of Scud missile attacks (39 Scud missiles, to be precise, according to Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, quoted in today’s Jerusalem Post) that sowed terror and reinforced strongly-held Jewish convictions — that should always have been in the Palestinian interest to dissipate (though the Palestinians have no other responsibility) — that the gas chambers of World War II are never felt to be very far away, in Israel.  (Saddam ordered Scud attacks on Saudi Arabia, too.)

Saddam’s next to last words: “Palestine is Arab!”

His last words, apparently in a mocking tone, the beginning of a response to a taunt from one of his execution’s witnesses: “Muqtada al-Sadr…”

From Morocco to the Straits of Homuz, Arab countries are full of guys trained, like Saddam Hussein, that the only way to cover their backs and to impose control in their countries is to behave like cruel but cartoon-like bullies.  The imposition of democracy, whatever that is conceived to mean, is not going to change this now. 

Someone I once loved told me about his military training, with other Palestinian volunteers, in Iraq — which he said was harder than any other they endured — in Algiers, or even in the Soviet Union.  In Iraq, he said, the Palestinians were ordered to take off their shirts and crawl in desert heat over a rock-strewn landscape, shredding their flesh, because, they were told, “The path to Palestine is paved with blood“. 

Palestinian blood, of course, and Israeli blood, but not Iraqi.  We have been reminded, in the impressive obituary published today in The Times of London, that Iraq did not commit its forces in Jordan to interfere in King Hussein’s bloody “Black September” repression against Fatah fighters: “While the Baathists had denounced Qasim for his refusal to unite Iraq with Egypt, they now revealed themselves as even more narrowly jealous of Iraq’s sovereignty than Qasim had been. Their forces along the Jordanian border with Israel refused to help the Palestinians in their war with King Hussein in 1970, and they became fiercely hostile to Syria, ruled by another wing of the Baath party.” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2523974_1,00.html

(Iraqi forces also did not do much of anything useful in the 1948 war, either — but this cannot be pinned on Saddam.)

Robert Fisk, writing in the Independent today, says “It was my colleague, Tom Friedman – now a messianic columnist for The New York Times – who perfectly caught Saddam’s character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, ‘part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck’-. And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.”

Fisk also writes: “But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers – what about the other guilty men?  No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don’t gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn’t invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead – and thousands of Western troops are dead – because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.  In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent – we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam’s shame at Abu Ghraib – and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.  Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam’s weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.  And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our “bunker buster” bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our “victory” – our “mission accomplished” – who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement…”

Full of fury, and regret, and pity (none of which he feels alone), Fisk addss: “I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us – and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam’s executioners.  I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib – only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own – and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator’s soft, damp hand…” http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2112555.ece 

Comments from most-admired bloggers:

Angry Arab wrote on Friday 29 Dec 2006: “The trial was in fact as cartoonish and as politically managed as trials in neighboring Arab countries. From the changes of the judge (and whatever happened to that judge who went missing as soon as he said in “court” that he does not consider Saddam to be a tyrant?), to the selection of the crimes–clearly intending to spare Gulf countries, Europe, and US embarrassment from their association with the crimes of Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war years. That was why Dujayl–of all his crimes–was chosen. And notice that the Anfal trial was rushed in order to not link it to his other crimes during the time…I am not happy with the coverage that I am watching on AlJazeera now. It is way too somber and way too melancholic, and they ran non-stop a statement by Saddam’s nephew, all day long, just as AlArabiyya coverage is way to celebratory and fake in trying to deny the sectarian undertones of the perception of the execution (that is perceived of an act by Kurdish and Shi`ite militias (backed by US) against a “Sunni”. Is it not ironical that Al-Arabiya was trolling out Shi`ite voices to legitimize the execution on the same day that a senior Wahhabi cleric in Saudi Arabia officially declared the infidelity of Shi`ites? AlJazeera needs to add footage and coverage of Saddam’s crimes… The contemporary history of Iraq will continue to be bloody. I once asked my professor, Hanna Batatu (search the archives of this site for my entry on his great book on Iraq) as to why he was late in producing his book on Iraq. He told me that when he finished his dissertation, he was ready to turn it into a book. But the bloodshed of the early 1960s, and the hanging of communists from electricity poles by Ba`thists, bitterly distressed him. He could not come back to his notes, he told me.”http://angryarab.blogspot.com/ 

Juan Cole goes on to write that Saddam had CIA backing in his 1959 attempt to assassinate Abdul Karim Kassim, an Iraqi military officer who led Iraq after overthrowing the British-installed Hashemite monarch, and had subsequently withdrew from the U.S.-organized anti-communist Baghdad Pact and started to implement some ideas on land reform.  Saddam also had CIA support in his subsequent exile in Cairo, Cole writes, ading that there is evidence of substantial American support for the Baath party coup that overthrew Kassim.  The U.S. then supported the Baath party civilian coup that overthrew Kassim’s successor, and installed Ahmad Hassan Al-Bakr and his cousin, Saddam Hussein.  Because they developed good relations with the Soviet Union, Cole writes, Nixon and Kissinger supported the Shah of Iran’s efforts (with CIA support) to use the Kurds against the Iraqi Baath leadership; when the Shah changed his mind, and abandoned the Kurds, Saddam then moved against them, Cole says.  The Reagan administration then gave Saddam “important diplomatic encouragement” from late 1983, Cole writes, “especially after the US faced attacks from radicalized Shiites in Lebanon linked to Iran, and from the Iraqi Da`wa Party, which engaged in terrorism against the US and French embassies in Kuwait”.

Here, Juan Cole pays homage to George Washington University’s National Security Archives compilation of released documents, entitled Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984, which was edited by Joyce Battle (and dated February 25, 2003): “The Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) was one of a series of crises during an era of upheaval in the Middle East…The war followed months of rising tension between the Iranian Islamic republic and secular nationalist Iraq. In mid-September 1980 Iraq attacked, in the mistaken belief that Iranian political disarray would guarantee a quick victory.  The international community responded with U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire and for all member states to refrain from actions contributing in any way to the conflict’s continuation…The U.S. had already ended, when the shah fell, previously massive military sales to Iran. In 1980 the U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Iran because of the Tehran embassy hostage crisis; Iraq had broken off ties with the U.S. during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.  The U.S. was officially neutral regarding the Iran-Iraq war, and claimed that it armed neither side. Iran depended on U.S.-origin weapons, however, and sought them from Israel, Europe, Asia, and South America. Iraq started the war with a large Soviet-supplied arsenal, but needed additional weaponry as the conflict wore on…Initially, Iraq advanced far into Iranian territory, but was driven back within months. By mid-1982, Iraq was on the defensive against Iranian human-wave attacks. The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq: measures already underway to upgrade U.S.-Iraq relations were accelerated, high-level officials exchanged visits, and in February 1982 the State Department removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism. (It had been included several years earlier because of ties with several Palestinian nationalist groups, not Islamicists sharing the worldview of al-Qaeda. Activism by Iraq’s main Shiite Islamicist opposition group, al-Dawa, was a major factor precipitating the war — stirred by Iran’s Islamic revolution, its endeavors included the attempted assassination of Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz.)  Prolonging the war was phenomenally expensive. Iraq received massive external financial support from the Gulf states, and assistance through loan programs from the U.S. The White House and State Department pressured the Export-Import Bank to provide Iraq with financing, to enhance its credit standing and enable it to obtain loans from other international financial institutions. The U.S. Agriculture Department provided taxpayer-guaranteed loans for purchases of American commodities, to the satisfaction of U.S. grain exporters.  The U.S. restored formal relations with Iraq in November 1984, but the U.S. had begun, several years earlier, to provide it with intelligence and military support (in secret and contrary to this country’s official neutrality) in accordance with policy directives from President Ronald Reagan. These were prepared pursuant to his March 1982 National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM 4-82) asking for a review of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.  Prolonging the war was phenomenally expensive. Iraq received massive external financial support from the Gulf states, and assistance through loan programs from the U.S. The White House and State Department pressured the Export-Import Bank to provide Iraq with financing, to enhance its credit standing and enable it to obtain loans from other international financial institutions. The U.S. Agriculture Department provided taxpayer-guaranteed loans for purchases of American commodities, to the satisfaction of U.S. grain exporters.  The U.S. restored formal relations with Iraq in November 1984, but the U.S. had begun, several years earlier, to provide it with intelligence and military support (in secret and contrary to this country’s official neutrality) in accordance with policy directives from President Ronald Reagan. These were prepared pursuant to his March 1982 National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM 4-82) asking for a review of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.”  http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

Then, Juan Cole continues on his blog: “The Reagan administration worked behind the scenes [at the United Nations — and everyone went along with this, I can attest] to foil Iran’s motion of censure against Iraq for using chemical weapons. 

Cole goes on, quoting from one of his earlier articles: “As far as possible, [then-U.S. Secretary of State George] Shultz wanted to weasel out of joining such a U.N. condemnation of Iraq. He wrote in a cable that the U.S. delegation to the U.N. should work to develop general Western position in support of a motion to take “no decision” on Iranian draft resolution on use of chemical weapons by Iraq. If such a motion gets reasonable and broad support and sponsorship, USDEL should vote in favor. Failing Western support for “no decision,” USDEL should abstain.’ … Shultz also wanted to throw up smokescreens to take the edge off the Iranian motion, arguing that the U.N. Human Rights Commission was ‘an inappropriate forum’ for consideration of chemical weapons, and stressing that loss of life owing to Iraq’s use of chemicals was ‘only a part’ of the carnage that ensued from a deplorable war. A more lukewarm approach to chemical weapons use by a rogue regime (which referred to the weapons as an “insecticide” for enemy “insects”) could not be imagined. In the end, the U.N. resolution condemned the use of chemical weapons but did not name Iraq directly as a perpetrator.” 

Then, Juan Cole’s post today continues: “After the Gulf War of 1991, when Shiites and Kurds rose up against Saddam Hussein, the Bush senior administration sat back and allowed the Baathists to fly helicopter gunships and to massively repress the uprising. President GHW Bush had called on Iraqis to rise up against their dictator, but when they did so he left them in the lurch. This inaction, deriving from a fear that a Shiite-dominated Iraq would ally with Tehran, allowed Saddam to remain in power until 2003.” http://www.juancole.com/ 

From Juan Cole’s Informed Comment(12/30/2006 06:30:00 AM) – For Whom the Bell Tolls: Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein: “The old monster swung from the gallows this morning at 6 am Baghdad time. His Shiite executioners danced around his body.  Saddam Hussain was one of the 20th century’s most notorious tyrants, though the death toll he racked up is probably exaggerated by his critics. The reality was bad enough.  The tendency to treat Saddam and Iraq in a historical vacuum, and in isolation from the superpowers, however, has hidden from Americans their own culpability in the horror show that has been Iraq for the past few decades. Initially, the US used the Baath Party as a nationalist foil to the Communists. Then Washington used it against Iran. The welfare of Iraqis themselves appears to have been on no one’s mind, either in Washington or in Baghdad…” http://www.juancole.com/

In a separate article on Salon.com (you have to get through the annoying ad first), Juan Cole writes: “The political ineptitude of the tribunal, from start to finish, was astonishing. The United States and its Iraqi allies basically gave Saddam a platform on which to make himself a martyr to Iraqi unity and independence — even if by unity and independence Saddam was really appealing to Sunnis’ nostalgia for their days of hegemony.   In his farewell address, however, Saddam could not help departing from his national-unity script to take a few last shots at his ethnic rivals. Despite some smarmy language urging Iraqis not to hate the Americans, Saddam denounced the “invaders” and “Persians” who had come into Iraq. The invaders are the American army, and the Persians are code not just for Iranian agents but for Iraqi Shiites, whom many Sunni Arabs view as having Iranian antecedents and as not really Iraqi or Arab. It was such attitudes that led to slaughters like that at Dujail.  In his death, as in his life, Saddam Hussein is managing to divide Iraqis and condemn them to further violence and brutality. But the Americans and the Shiite- and Kurd-dominated government bear some blame for the way they botched his trial and gave him this last opportunity to play the spoiler.” http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/30/saddam/index_np.html