London, Jul 2 (IPS) – Evidence offered by a top CIA man could confirm  the testimony given by Saddam Hussein at the opening of his trial in  Baghdad Thursday that he knew of the Halabja massacre only from the  newspapers.

 

Thousands were reported killed in the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in  Halabja in the north of Iraq in March 1988 towards the end of Iraq‘s  eight-year war with Iran. The gassing of the Kurds has long been held  to be the work of Ali Hassan al-Majid, named in the West because of  that association as ‘Chemical Ali’. Saddam Hussein is widely alleged  to have ordered Ali to carry out the chemical attack.

 

The Halabja massacre is now prominent among the charges read out  against Saddam in the Baghdad court. When that charge was read out,  Saddam replied that he had read about the massacre in a newspaper.  Saddam has denied these allegations ever since they were made. But now  with a trial on, he could summon a witness in his defence with the  potential to blow apart the charge and create one of the greatest  diplomatic disasters the United States has ever known.

 

A report prepared by the top CIA official handling the matter says  Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the massacre, and indicates  that it was the work of Iranians. Further, the Scott inquiry on the  role of the British government has gathered evidence that following  the massacre the United States in fact armed Saddam Hussein to counter  the Iranians chemicals for chemicals.

 

Few believe that a CIA man would attend a court hearing in Baghdad in  defence of Saddam. But in this case the CIA boss has gone public with  his evidence, and this evidence has been in the public domain for more  than a year.

 

The CIA officer Stephen C. Pelletiere was the agency’s senior  political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. As professor at  the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, he says he was privy to much  of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do  with the Persian Gulf.

 

 In addition, he says he headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the  Iraqis would fight a war against the United States, and the classified  version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

 

Pelletiere went public with his information on no less a platform than  The New York Times in an article on January 31 last year titled ‘A War  Crime or an Act of War?’ The article which challenged the case for war  quoted U.S. President George W. Bush as saying: “The dictator who is assembling  the world’s most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole  villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured.”

 

Pelletiere says the United States Defence Intelligence Agency  investigated and produced a classified report following the Halabja  gassing, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need- to-know basis. “That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that  killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas,” he wrote in The New York Times.

 

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the  battle around Halabja, he said. “The condition of the dead Kurds’ bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent —  that is, a cyanide-based gas – which Iran was known to use. “The  Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are  not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.”

 

Pelletiere writes that these facts have “long been in the public  domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited,  they are rarely mentioned.”

 

Pelletiere wrote that 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. There may be  justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them.”

 

Pelletiere has maintained his position. All Saddam would have to do in  court now is to cite The New York Times article even if the court  would not summon Pelletiere. The issues raised in the article would  themselves be sufficient to raise serious questions about the charges  filed against Saddam – and in turn the justifications offered last  year for invading Iraq.

 

The Halabja killings were cited not just by Bush but by British Prime  Minister Tony Blair to justify his case for going along with a U.S. invasion of Iraq. A British government dossier released to justify the  war on Iraq says that “Saddam has used chemical weapons, not only  against an enemy state, but against his own people.” An inquiry report  in 1996 by Lord Justice Scott in what came to be known as the  arms-to-Iraq affair gave dramatic pointers to what followed after  Halabja. After the use of poison gas in 1988 both the United States  and Britain began to supply Saddam Hussein with even more chemical weapons.

 

The Scott inquiry had been set up in 1992 following the collapse of  the trial in the case of Matrix Churchill, a British firm exporting  equipment to Iraq that could be put to military use.

 

Three senior executives of Matrix Churchill said the government knew  what Matrix Churchill was doing, and that its managing director Paul  Henderson had been supplying information about Iraq to the British  intelligence agencies on a regular basis.

 

The inquiry revealed details of the British government’s secret  decision to supply Saddam with even more weapons-related equipment  after the Halabja killings.

 

Former British foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe was found to have  written that the end of the Iraq-Iran war could mean “major  opportunities for British industry” in military exports, but he wanted  to keep that proposal quiet.

 

“It could look very cynical if so soon after expressing outrage about  the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms  sales,” one of his officials told the Scott inquiry. Lord Scott condemned the  government’s decision to change its policy, while keeping MPs and the  public in the dark.

 

Soon after the attack, the United States approved the export to Iraq  of virus cultures and a billion-dollar contract to design and build a  petrochemical plant the Iraqis planned to use to produce mustard gas.

 

Saddam Hussein has appeared so far without a lawyer to defend him. A  Jordanian firm is reported to be speaking up for him. But the real  defence for him could be waiting for him in Washington and London.

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