MAIN - 19/04/2003

Iraq - Did Portugal have all the facts?

The Portugal News has received a full transcript of a report by a former CIA senior political analyst that states that Iran was responsible for the mass murder of 5,000 Kurds by chemicals at the Iraqi township of Halabja in 1988.

The Halabja massacre was one of the pretexts put forward by the US Government for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Some political commentators, including Matthew Norman of the UK Guardian newspaper, are saying that if the report had been made public before the build up to the present conflict in Iraq, Portugal and Spain might well have had second thoughts about supporting the US and British invasion.

The author of the report, Mr. C. Pelletiere, who was responsible for investigating the incident on behalf of the US Government, states that the gassing took place during a battle between Iraqi and Iranian forces. Immediately after the battle the United States Defence Intelligence Agency produced a classified report, which clearly illustrated that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds.

A team of investigators, under the direction of Pelletierre, discovered that the condition of the Kurds’ bodies indicated they had been killed by a cyanide-based gas, which the Iranians had been known to use. At that time the Iraqis were using mustard gas and there is no record that they possessed the cyanide based blood agent gas.

Pelletiere, who worked as a CIA agent during the Iraq - Iran war and was also a professor at the US Army War College from 1988 to 2000, was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington regarding the Persian Gulf. He headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the US.

Part of his report on the Halabja massacre was published by the New York Times last January but was ignored by other major newspapers and TV stations.

But Pelletiere’s report is not the only example of political spin doctoring concerning the drumming up of support for a war against Iraq. A claim by the British Government that it was in possession of documents showing that Iraq had attempted to buy 500 tons of uranium from Africa has been shown to be false. Copies of the documents were handed to General Mohamed ElBaradei, Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In a presentation to the United Nations Security Council ElBaradei has proved that the documents were forgeries. His testimony was backed up by the United Nations’ weapons inspectors. Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, has called for an investigation into what he describes as a campaign to deceive the public.