First I wondered why you two were passing on a 5 month old story... till I discovered parts of it had appeared in a couple of conservative publications.
I read the New Yorker piece and agree; it's the single best thing I've read about the whole Iraq thing. As long as you folks felt it apropos to use selective excerpts, I will too.
>>The Kurds are neither Arab, Persian, nor Turkish; they are a distinct ethnic group, with their own culture and language. Most Kurds are Muslim (the most famous Muslim hero of all, Saladin, who defeated the Crusaders, was of Kurdish origin), but there are Jewish and Christian Kurds, and also followers of the Yezidi religion, which has its roots in Sufism and Zoroastrianism. <<
How ironic that Hussein wants to be Saladin, a Kurd.
>>In the nineteen-seventies, the Iraqi Kurds allied themselves with the Shah of Iran in a territorial dispute with Iraq. America, the Shah's patron, once again became the Kurds' patron, too, supplying them with arms for a revolt against Baghdad. But a secret deal between the Iraqis and the Shah, arranged in 1975 by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, cut off the Kurds and brought about their instant collapse; for the Kurds, it was an ugly betrayal.<<
That's those dang liberals for ya....
>>The Kurdish safe haven, in northern Iraq, was born of another American betrayal. In 1991, after the United States helped drive Iraq out of Kuwait, President George Bush ignored an uprising that he himself had stoked, and Kurds and Shiites in Iraq were slaughtered by the thousands. Thousands more fled the country, the Kurds going to Turkey, and almost immediately creating a humanitarian disaster. The Bush Administration, faced with a televised catastrophe, declared northern Iraq a no-fly zone and thus a safe haven, a tactic that allowed the refugees to return home. And so, under the protective shield of the United States and British Air Forces, the unplanned Kurdish experiment in self-government began. Although the Kurdish safe haven is only a virtual state, it is an incipient democracy, a home of progressive Islamic thought and pro-American feeling.<<
At least that time, GHWB redeemed hisself after his betrayal.
>>Experts now believe that Halabja and other places in Kurdistan were struck by a combination of mustard gas and nerve agents, including sarin (the agent used in the Tokyo subway attack) and VX, a potent nerve agent. Baban's suggestion that biological weapons may also have been used surprised me. One possible biological weapon that Baban mentioned was aflatoxin, which causes long-term liver damage.<<
>>United Nations inspectors were alarmed to learn about the aflatoxin program. Richard Spertzel, the chief biological-weapons inspector for UNSCOM, put it this way: "It is a devilish weapon. Iraq was quite clearly aware of the long-term carcinogenic effect of aflatoxin. Aflatoxin can only do one thing—destroy people's livers. And I suspect that children are more susceptible. From a moral standpoint, aflatoxin is the cruellest weapon—it means watching children die slowly of liver cancer."
Spertzel believes that if aflatoxin were to be used as a weapon it would not be delivered by a missile. "Aflatoxin is a little tricky," he said. "I don't know if a single dose at one point in time is going to give you the long-term effects. Continuous, repeated exposure—through food—would be more effective." When I asked Spertzel if other countries have weaponized aflatoxin, he replied, "I don't know any other country that did it. I don't know any country that would."<<
Aflatoxin can be found in nature; it's common on peanuts.
>>When he maneuvered UNSCOM out of his country in 1998, weapons inspectors had found a sizable portion of his arsenal but were vexed by what they couldn't find. His scientists certainly have produced and weaponized anthrax, and they have manufactured botulinum toxin, which causes muscular paralysis and death. They've made Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium that causes gas gangrene, a condition in which the flesh rots. They have also made wheat-cover smut, which can be used to poison crops, and ricin, which, when absorbed into the lungs, causes hemorrhagic pneumonia.
According to Gary Milhollin, the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, whose Iraq Watch project monitors Saddam's weapons capabilities, inspectors could not account for a great deal of weaponry believed to be in Iraq's possession, including almost four tons of the nerve agent VX; six hundred tons of ingredients for VX; as much as three thousand tons of other poison-gas agents; and at least five hundred and fifty artillery shells filled with mustard gas. Nor did the inspectors find any stores of aflatoxin.<<
The things our mass media ignores...
>>Barzani and Salih accused the World Health Organization, in particular, of rewarding with lucrative contracts only companies favored by Saddam."Every time I interact with the U.N.," Salih said, "I think, My God, Jesse Helms is right. If the U.N. can't help us, this poor, dispossessed Muslim nation, then who is it for?"
Many Kurds believe that Iraq's friends in the U.N. system, particularly members of the Arab bloc, have worked to keep the Kurds' cause from being addressed. The Kurds face an institutional disadvantage at the U.N., where, unlike the Palestinians, they have not even been granted official observer status. Salih grew acerbic: "Compare us to other liberation movements around the world. We are very mature. We don't engage in terror. We don't condone extremist nationalist notions that can only burden our people. Please compare what we have achieved in the Kurdistan national-authority areas to the Palestinian national authority of Mr. Arafat. We have spent the last ten years building a secular, democratic society, a civil society. What has he built?"<<
I left out the parts about the unfeeling UN official, because these points are well put and can stand alone.
>>Attempts by Congress in 1988 to impose sanctions on Iraq were stifled by the Reagan and Bush Administrations, and the story of Saddam's surviving victims might have vanished completely had it not been for the reporting of people like Randal and the work of a British documentary filmmaker named Gwynne Roberts, who, after hearing stories about a sudden spike in the incidence of birth defects and cancers, not only in Halabja but also in other parts of Kurdistan, had made some disturbing films on the subject. However, no Western government or United Nations agency took up the cause.<<
This has always been a sticking point with me; if Hussein is so bad and is such a threat, why didn't GHWB take him out in Desert Storm? I knew the Arabs in the coalition made that part of the deal. In the past year, I've gained an understanding why Iran, SA and especially, Turkey, don't wish to deal with a fragmented Iraq.
However, 'because of politics' (or diplomacy or whatever) does not cut it as an excuse. Especially after reading this article and gaining a better understanding of the past and ongiong persecution of the Kurds. What is surprising is that the Kurds have faith in us at all.
I don't think it's because of our Bill of Rights or our standard of living or our record on human rights. I don't even think it's trust.
The Kurds view us as their only hope for survival.
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I also found info on the author:
First, the article originally appeared 3/25/02, so it's not new.
>>Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg is a staff writer for the New Yorker, specializing in foreign reporting with an emphasis on Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. His article, “Letter from Cairo: Behind Mubarak: Egyptian clerics and intellectuals respond to terrorism” appears in the October 8th issue of the New Yorker. He is currently writing a non-fiction book about the Middle East, due out next year. Previously, Goldberg was a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.<<
Here's some more of his pertinent work (gasp!) on a liberal site: freshair.npr.org
And here's Terry Gross of NPR interviewing him about this specific article: freshair.npr.org
Another transcript of an interview on this article in which he says he had insufficient info to make a conclusion about the Al Qaida/Iraq linkage: mail.lsit.ucsb.edu
At a Pakistani madrasas and with Musharraf shortly after 9-11. This appeared in the NY Times Magazine:
bereanpublishers.co.nz
Pre- 9/11, in Palestine:
jewishpublicaffairs.org
On the Egyptian press: wnyc.org
(Isn't this the govt we just sent billions in fresh military aid just yesterday?
On King Abdullah of Jordan's first year:
washingtoninstitute.org
mtholyoke.edu
He gets criticized by an African educator for a 1997 article: ohiou.edu
The last two paragraphs are all that mention him here: cbc.ca
But now it gets curious as Jude Wanniski arranges a meeting with Farrakhan. The intro is here:
polyconomics.com
His interview w/Farrakhan: 216.239.51.100
In which he says:
>>JG: You know I’m in a strange position, where no one in the Jewish community would question my loyalty to the Jewish community. I’m a veteran of the Israeli army and I’m a religious Jew. I’m also, however, a journalist, and that gives me the freedom to come here, to sit with you, without...<<
But who is Jude Wanniski? I first got the impression he's a Farrakhan supporter, as that interview was passed on to Sen. Lieberman by Wanniski. But no, he also cowrite a book (The Way the World Works)with Robert Novak.
He also has this endorsement on his site:
>>"Economic truth is a lever that can move governments, move history...the economic model that we've created truly has become what Jude Wanniski described as 'the way the world works."--Ronald Reagan, December 1988 PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES <<
However, Wanniski later became less enamored of Goldberg, specifically about this very article.
Here's his critique:
supplysideinvestor.com
And here the Washington Post says the CIA discounted the Al Qaida/Iraq connection but Perle does not: afgha.com
There's enough to make a guy wonder. Is Goldberg filtering through a right wing pro-Israel lens? After all, this article was quoted in the WSJ and American Heritage. But also in many lefty arenas: Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Phoenix...
How does he get around and gain access in such a broad swath of places? Is he an intelligence agent?
Or was he just misled by the Kurds as they staged a show for him?
Finally, this clinched it for me: online.wsj.com
Supporting documentation. From Human Rights Watch. The same org that found insufficient evidence of the Iraq/incubator babies story.
If HRW could take a position exonerating the Iraqis in one case, while pursuing a war crimes trial for Hussein in another, it suggests they weigh evidence carefully.
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>>The Iraqi military's withdrawal from the region in October 1991 after the imposition of a no-fly zone made it feasible for the first time in years for outsiders to reach the area.
Human Rights Watch investigators took advantage of this opening to enter northern Iraq and document Saddam's crimes. Some 350 witnesses and survivors were interviewed. Mass graves were exhumed. And Kurdish rebels were convinced to hand over some 18 tons of documents that they had seized during the brief post-war uprising from Iraqi police stations. These documents were airlifted to Washington, where Human Rights Watch researchers poured through this treasure trove of information about the inner workings of a ruthless regime.<<
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This suggests HRW has NON-CLASSIFIED info that can be presented to the public. I hope they do it.
I'm still upset that Bush the Elder was derelict in his duty. If HRW will present some of its info, I'll need no further evidence of the need for regime change. |
