"He Gassed His Own People!" Or Did He?

Great Debates
81

“did Lincoln “attack his own people”?”

That would probably be closer to the truth than what is being kicked around here. These were a group of people who would not consider themselves “his people” nor would he consider them “his people”. They were staging violent oppostion to the government in a struggle for indedpendence over a long period. He gased his own people? No. He gased some people that were fighting his control of the country and collaborating with the enemy.
Of course our government would never deploy gas on civilans, women and children, of our “own people”, attack them with armoured vehicles and subsequently burn them to death just becauce they were at odds with the government. That would be crazy to think that we would ever treat our own people that way.

82

Well, except for the Sioux, the Comanche, the Apache, the Cherokee…

Of course, that was a long time ago. The statue of limitations, and all that.

83

Is that like the statue of liberty? :smiley:

84

Your thinking of the old one, with all that “huddled masses” stuff. The new one is packing heat. There are those who think that an improvement.

85

“No, but when the only justification for his assertion is the bluish lips thingie in his response to a critic, we must assume that is Pelletiere’s main thrust”
How do you know this is the only justification in the report? It might have been the argument the authors felt was easiest to summarize in a letter or the only one which didn’t use classified sources.

"And I have no reason to doubt HRW’s assertion. But if you wish to make the claim that bluish extremities are only found as a result of cyanide based gases used by Iranians, please provide evidence. "
Um why take HRW’s assertion at face value? Why don’t you provide evidence to back their assertion?

More generally you are simplifying what is a probably a fairly complicated medical and intelligence assessment into a couple of sentences about “blue extremities” and the like. In all probability the conclusion was reached on the basis of multiple evidence listed in the Village Voice article: field reports, NSA intercepts etc. You can’t just reduce this to little snippets and claim it has been “refuted”.

86

Maybe so, but so far, the only justification he has mentioned was the bluish tinge.

As for me proving things, fine. The Department of Health states that one of the symptoms of nerve agents is respiratory paralysis and that death often comes via respiratory arrest. The National Institutes of Health state that a bluish discoloration of the lips, fingernails and other extremities is caused by a lack of oxygen. Thus, putting two and two together, we see that nerve agents will result in bluish discoloration.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s move on. Frankly, you are the one making the assertion that Pelletiere’s report is such a complicated synthesis of information, please get a hold of this information and break it down for me. Because, right now, all we have to go on is his own defense of his report in which the only evidence he presents is the bluish discoloration. But we know that Iraqi nerve agents could produce that result, at least, according to HRW, DoH and NIH. So that isn’t a defense at all. Surely, if Pelletiere is such an expert, he would have known that is no defense and would have known that any chemical weapons expert would have known that evidence was meaningless, so he would have brought out something more convincing.

Now, I could be wrong. Maybe Pelletiere has all this complicated information, but no one has stated this. Pelletiere, HRW and every other story on this that anyone has mentioned in this thread have only mentioned the bluish discoloration as evidence that Iraq couldn’t have done it. Well, that’s a giant crock. So now it’s time for you to provide evidence of your assertions, CyberPundit. Please find me an article that goes into more detail beyond bluish lips. Otherwise, just drop it.

87

Uh, no. I never implied that. Note that I said on multiple occasions that chemical gassing is a war crime regardless. :rolleyes:

88

Yes. Of course. Comparing Lincoln to Saddam is a valid and intelligent argument. They are much the same.

What the fuck? Our President is a scumbag because you don’t like his tax-relief plan, yet you’re defending Saddam Hussein, murderer of women and children. There’s a monument in Iraq commemorating the spot where he and members of the Ba’ath party gunned down his predecessor in cold blood to seize power.

They don’t get much worse than this guy you’re defending by invoking Lincoln.

If you like him so much, go to Iraq and fight for him.

I can’t believe you would attempt to excuse, downplay or use this kind of invalid horseshit.

You’re acting as if this is one offense, but they’re actually several, well-documented and corroborated incidents, and he’s been taken action against the Kurds for quite some time.

He’s been on a deliberate campaign to destroy these people, wipe them from the face of the earth. That’s genocide.

These are real people that died from toxic chemicals. Have you ever seen a poisoned rat? Or, a gassed gopher? It is no an easy death.

Entire villages, men woman and children died horribly and in great pain. They are no longer living their lives because of these actions.

And in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, you would defend this, pretend that it didn’t happen, do or say anything to attempt to discredit these atrocities, and why?

So you can thow around your Bushista catch phrases, pretend at wit and call our President a liar because it suits your personal political bias.

89

He says no such thing.

First quote, available to anyone who read the original:
"I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq’s main target. "

and the second:
"And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, 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. "

third: "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. "

Please note: there is no reference to “blue lips” or “extremeties” as being the only evidence, just the “condition of the bodies”. Please also note that he does not assert this himself as himself, but as the head of an investigative team. Presumably, his expertise in this regard was respected by persons in a position to know. Presumably, he would therefore also be aware of these facts you are at such pains to present.

90

Yeah, putting “two and two” together after a bit of surfing is such a sophisticated form of medical analysis. :rolleyes: Are you seriously suggesting that US intelligence analysts are so incompetent that they make arguments which can be rejected on such flimsy grounds?

As for the other evidence of course it isn’t going to be publicly available since it’s likely to be based on classified intelligence reports. All we know is the conclusion of what was obviously a fairly careful process.

What exactly are you saying? That American intelligence agencies are incompetent? Dishonest?

91

Oh, what a load of crap, Scylla, who do you think you’re kidding?

“…Our President is a scumbag because you…” Hogwash. He’s a mediocrity, not a scumbag.

“…yet you’re defending Saddam Hussein, murderer of women and children…” Piffle. Nothing I’ve said could remotely be characterized as a defense of Saddam. What utter rot, Scylla.

“If you like him so much, go to Iraq and fight for him.”
As above. Lamest crap you’ve ever posted.

The Lincoln analogy takes off on an idea raised previously, as to whether persons in a state of rebellion actually qualify as being “his people”. A trivial point, to be sure, which is why it only got a one sentence throw away. I sincerely doubt that anyone else missed that.

You’re embarrassing yourself, man. Get a grip.

92

To both CyberPundit and elucidator:

However, the authors [Pelletiere, etc] of that internal study, leaked at a time when the Bush Administration was strenuously resisting renewed Congressional efforts to introduce comprehensive trade sanctions against Iraq, cite no authority for their key allegations. In an earlier footnote, the report even notes that Iraq admitted using poison gas at Halabja.12
<snip>
12 Ibid., p. 90 n138. The note goes on to say that Iraq maintains it has never used the weapon “against civilians as part of a program of genocide.” It is not clear if that means it might have used it against civilians in a city under siege, as Halabja was at the time.
So Pelletiere’s own study states that Iraq used chemical weapons at Halabja.

93

Hmmm…didn’t mean to code quite in that manner. If a mod can think of a better way, feel free to change it.

94

If I read it correctly, Mr. Pelleterre is in fact suggesting that both sides used poison gas during a battle taking place in the vicinity of Hjbala, and that, in all likelihood, the gassing of the village was unintentional, but that the condition of the victims suggested that it was Iranian gas. Under different circumstances, it might very well have been Iraqi gas. This might also explain the alleged comment of Mr. Aziz, i.e., he was confessing to a blunder, not murder.

95

We agree. And so, the fact is the USA aided in the commission of war crimes.

To now say Saddam is guilty of similar crimes rings hypocritical. The USA was fine with Saddam doing such things when it served their purposes. To use that now as a justification to attack him is just unsustainable. That is my only point. The USA is (sadly) not in a position to dictate moral codes to the rest of the world.

96

[hijack]

elucidator (reference from pg 1):

Heh heh heh….

You see. It’s zingers like this, sir, that have insured you the top position on my list of all-time SDMB heroes, ’luce.

Sorry to interupt the debate. Please continue.

[/hijack]

97

“I love compliments, we all do: Congressman, humorists, burglars, all of us in the trade. Why, I could live for a week on a single compliment! But I was struck speechless by this complimentary thunderbolt! Never had I heard a compliment so beautifully phrased, or so richly deserved”

  • Mark Twain
98

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

  • Queen / Hamlet / Shakespeare :slight_smile:
99

After the third time or so that your poison gas takes out a village of Kurds it stops being an accident.

You’ve claimed that the administration was lying to promote the war when Bush said Iraq used poison gas against it’s own people.

Do you now retract that, or would you still argue that it was a lie?

100

Actually, mine was supposed to be a more friendly :wink: … not overly competent with the smilie thing…