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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: runes who wrote (70673)	10/6/2003 11:42:12 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

I could not see the "why" in that link. There was a nice little poem, though. Looking through some more analytical sources, this is what I got at first look: fr.wikipedia.org Translation: The term Halabja refers to a battle between Iran and Iraq. It had taken place in the area of Halabja (Iraqi Kurdistan) during the Iran-Iraq war. The two camps have used forbidden combat gas, and the Kurdish civilians, caught between two fires were killed by the gas. In a populattion of 80,000 inhabitants, nearly 7,000 people found their death. The massacre of Habalja did not raise protests by the international community in March 1988. At the time, it was admitted that the civilians had been killed "collaterally" due to an error in handling the combat gas. Two years later, when the Iran-Iraq War was finished and the Western powers stopped supporting Saddam Hussein, the massacre of Halabja was attributed to the Iraqis. A classified report by the Army War College showed, in 1990, that this imputation was hardly credible. The Washington Post on May 4, 1990 summarized it in these terms: "The Iranian assertion of March 20, 1990 according to which most of the victims of Halabja have been poisoned by cyanide has been considered a key element . . . . We know that Iraq did not use cyanide gas. We have a very good knowledge of the chemical agents that the Iraqis produced and used, and we know that none of them were made." Recently, Stephen C. Pelletiere, a political analyst for Iraq at the CIA during the Iran-Iraq war and then professor at the Army War College who participated in the editing of the report, recalled in the New York Times that the massacre of Halabja was a war crime, probably committed by the Iranian army, and not a crime against humanity commited by the Iraqi army. And, in any case, it is not about the deliberate assassination of civilian populations. By the way, this was what we were referring to, not Halabja. The reference to gassing was a mistake, I guess, although I haven't been able to see at first glance what Saddam used to massacre the Kurds who revolted against him as per Bush I's request: home.cogeco.ca greenleft.org.au