“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.” (J.Edgar Hoover,1895-1972.)
Since the fairy tale about
weapons of mass destruction that can be launched against Western targets
“within forty five minutes” is well past it’s sell by date, the
trans-Atlantic hasbara industry has dreamed up a new Grim Reaper for
Syria, their latest quarry: chemical weapons.
Stephen Zunes succinct quote
that: “ U.S. policy regarding chemical weapons has been so inconsistent
and politicized that the United States is in no position to take
leadership in response to any use of such weaponry by Syria”(i) hits the
chemical warhead on the nose cone.
Never mind Israel’s lethal
stockpiles, for ever, seemingly, blind eye territory, as apparently is
the United States 5,449 metric tons chemical weapons arsenal, which
cannot be disposed of until at least 2021 due to the hazards involved
(Japan Times, 12th September 2013.).
However the storm troopers of
the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) joined
the other insurgents in Syria and in under a month: “ … completed the
functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared
chemical weapons production facilities and mixing/filling plants,
rendering them inoperable.”(ii)
President Assad, his country,
this year alone, being five times an illegal target of Israel’s fearsome
destructive power from just across the Golan Heights (iii) stated that
his weapons were purely defensive – to use the cold war adage, a balance
of terror. All nations have the legal right to self-defence – unless
they are majority Muslim, it would seem.
Compared to the might of the
countries threatening its destruction, Syria is now, if not quite a
sitting duck, certainly a lamer one and must be mindful of the fate of
Libya, when pressured and Iraq when forced to disarm.
Coincidentally, President
Assad’s assertions are almost exactly those used by the United States
regarding chemical weapons – at a time when the U.S. was certainly at
no threat from external forces.
On 28th March 1990, the Los
Angeles Times reported that: “The U.S. government is considering forcing
two defiant chemical companies to sell the Pentagon a key ingredient
for producing nerve gas, Pentagon officials said …”
Further: “The United States has
said that it would need chemical weapons to deter the Soviets’ use of
chemical weapons during a non-nuclear conflict in Central Europe – a
prospect even (the then) Defense Secretary Dick Cheney (termed)
‘extremely remote.’ “
This was five months after the
fall of the Berlin Wall (9th November 1989) and fifteen months after
then President Gorbachev had committed, at the UN, to cutting Soviet
troops by a massive 500,000, including withdrawing significant military
presence in eastern Europe.(iv) A hand of reconciliation to the U.S., by
any standards, after approaching fifty years of hostilities.
Given the circumstances, was the US really concerned about the
“Soviet threat” or was an un-noticed elephant lurking round the corner?
The LA Times article was headed: “Firms Balk at Selling Nerve Gas
Element to U.S.: Two chemical companies cite corporate policy and
ethics. But the Pentagon may invoke an old law and force them to deliver
the compound.”
“The Occidental Chemical Corp., and the Mobay Corp., said company
policies forbid sales that would contribute to the proliferation of
chemical weapons. Both refused to fill Defense Department orders for
thionyl chloride, a widely used industrial and agricultural chemical
that is needed to make a lethal nerve agent.
Thus:
“The U.S. government is considering forcing two defiant
chemical companies to sell the Pentagon a key ingredient for producing
nerve gas …
“Defense officials said the two firms are the only ones in the United
States that now commercially produce the chemical agent. The firms’
unwillingness to sell has brought the production of a new generation of
U.S. chemical weapons, which began in 1987, to a halt.
“The Army needs 160,000 pounds of the ingredient by June
to proceed on schedule, the Pentagon said. Government officials said
they can compel the companies to sell the chemical under the Defense
Production Act, a 1950 law designed to give the Pentagon first priority on war materiel.”(My emphasis.)
What war did the Pentagon have
in mind, since the Administration of the President George H.W. Bush was
working: “to negotiate a worldwide ban” on chemical arms production and
just four months earlier Bush had also: “proposed to Soviet leader
Mikhail S. Gorbachev that the superpowers sign an accord at their summit
this June that would call for the destruction of 80% of their chemical
weapons …”
Yet regarding the purchase of the potentially lethal chemicals: “If
the United States invokes the Defense Production Act, the companies will
get the message that this is important and that they should reconsider
their policies”, said one official.
Occidental Petroleum Corp’s:
“Chairman and chief executive officer Armand Hammer (was) a longtime
champion of improved U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and has been
critical of the pace of U.S. arms control efforts.”
A spokesman for Mobay, subsidiary of German giant, Bayer: “said the
Pentagon approached Mobay with an order for 160,000 pounds of thionyl
chloride …” It was needed by June (1990) for use in the production of
the nerve agent Sarin, noted the New Scientist (7th April 1990.)
Mobay’s man was robust: “We have
told the government . . . that we have no intentions of selling thionyl
chloride for these purposes.”
So, to the lurking elephant. It seems it was less about deterring
“the Soviets’ …” and more about an Iraq, financially on its knees and
fiscally relentlessly undermined and targeted by the U.S. since the end
of the Iran-Iraq war (September1980-August1988) in which the U.S. had
backed Iraq (and armed both sides.)
During and after a U.S., driven
war, devastating both countries, Kuwait, Iraq accused, had been slant
drilling in to Iraq’s Rumaila oil fields. In addition, since the end of
the war, Kuwait had hugely exceeded OPEC production quotas, costing,
Iraq claimed, $14 billion a year, in addition to the $2.4 billion
estimated loss from the war period extractions of “some millions of
barrels” – additionally “capturing some of Iraq’s customers.”(v)
Saddam Hussein had told a
session of the Arab League: “We cannot tolerate this kind of economic
warfare. We have reached a state of affairs where we cannot take the
pressure.” Whatever else, he was the proudest of men, the admission must
have cost him dearly.
That America did not know
something was about to give in the near future is unthinkable. The U.S.
had flagged Kuwait’s oil tankers with U.S., flags in 1987, to protect
the statelet with the world’s fifth largest oil reserves, from Iran –
and they remained U.S. flagged. An attack on Kuwait would be an attack
on a U.S., protectorate.
Interestingly, some in
Washington were sympathetic to Saddam Hussein’s view: “Henry M. Schuler,
director of the energy security program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, said that from the Iraqi
viewpoint, the Kuwait Government was ‘acting aggressively – it was
economic warfare.’ “
”Whether he’s Hitler or not, he
has some reason on his side”, Mr. Schuler said, adding that: “American
officials needed to appreciate the economic and psychological
significance the Rumaila field holds for the Iraqis and why Kuwait’s
exploitation of Rumaila, in addition to its high oil output in the
1980′s, was an affront to the Iraqis.
”It’s not just the emotional man
in the street in the Arab world who finds the Iraq case appealing,” he
said: ”So do many of those who are thinking, intelligent people. If the
Iraqi people feel they are the victims of aggression, and that their
legitimate claims are being stifled now by American intervention, they
will hang in there a lot longer than if that were not the case.”
As recently as 2011, veteran,
ten term Congressman Ron Paul talked in Congress on the slant drilling
claims pointing out that: “Historian Mark Zepezauer notes that the
equipment to slant drill Iraq’s oil illegally was bought from (US
National Security Advisor to President George H.W. Bush) Brent
Scowcroft’s old company. Kuwait was pumping out around $14-billion worth
of oil from beneath Iraqi territory … Slant-drilling is enough to get
you shot in Texas, and it’s certainly enough to start a war in the
Mideast.”(vi) (Emphasis mine.)
However, it was not just Kuwait
targeting Iraq’s frail finances, as Brian Becker wrote in a detailed
account (vii.) The U.S., betrayal of their ally in the regional ravages
of the Iran-Iraq war, was total:
“Having weakened Iran, the goal was then to weaken Iraq
and make sure that it could not develop as a regional power capable of
challenging U.S. domination. After the war ended, U.S. policy toward
Iraq shifted, becoming increasingly hostile. The way it shifted is quite
revealing; bearing all the signs of a well-planned conspiracy.
“The cease-fire between Iran and Iraq began on August 20,
1988. On September 8, 1988, Iraqi Foreign Minister Sa’dun Hammadi was
to meet with U.S. Secretary of State George Schulz. The Iraqis had every
reason to expect a warm welcome in Washington and to begin an era of
closer co-operation on trade and industrial development.”
In the event, two hours before the meeting, without warning to
Hammadi, State Department spokesman Charles Redman called a press
conference charging that: “The U.S. Government is convinced that Iraq
has used chemical weapons … against Kurdish guerillas. We don’t know the
extent to which chemical weapons have been used but any use in this
context is abhorrent and unjustifiable.We expressed our strong concern
to the Iraqi Government which is well aware of our position that the use
of chemical weapons is totally unjustifiable and unacceptable.”
“Redman did not allude to any
evidence at all” and further mislead, since seemingly the Iraqi
government was not informed of the charges.
When Hammadi arrived at the
State Department for his meeting with Schulz, he was besieged by the
media asking about the massacre and unable to give coherent answers.
Bewildered, he repeatedly asked the journalists the basis for their
questions.
The meeting with Schulz was a dismal: “with Iraq’s expectations of
U.S. assistance in rebuilding after the Iran-Iraq war dashed.”
“Within twenty-four hours of Redman’s press release, the Senate voted
unanimously to impose economic sanctions on Iraq which would cancel
sales of food and technology.
Whilst the genocidal and ecocidal U.N. blockade on Iraq from August
1990 is remembered, this previous U.S. stab in the back to a former ally
on its financial knees is forgotten.
Thus, in addition to Kuwait’s alleged fiscal sabotage was, from
September 9th, 1988: “… a two year record that amounts to economic
harassment of Iraq by the American State Department, media, and
Congress.”
However, after the chemical weapons announcement, the near daily
rhetoric regarding Saddam from Washington and Whitehall was that: “he
gasses his own people”, “uses chemical weapons against his own people.”
And the drums of war beat ever louder.
In fact: “US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped Saddam Hussein
build up his arsenal of deadly chemical and biological weapons … As an
envoy from President Reagan … he had a secret meeting with (Saddam) and
arranged enormous military assistance for his war with Iran … a Senate
committee investigating the relationship between the U.S. and Iraq
discovered that in the mid-1980s – following the Rumsfeld visit – dozens
of biological agents were shipped to Iraq under licence from the
Commerce Department. (Emphasis mine.)
“They included anthrax, subsequently identified by the
Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare programme … ‘
The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to
Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for
chemical warfare.’ “ (viii)
Pressure on Iraq accelerating, the U.S.-U.K., and “coalition” was
handed another propaganda coup, when, on 15th March 1990, Iraq executed
Farzad Bazoft, an Iranian born freelance journalist with a desk at
London’s Observer newspaper.
After a massive explosion as al-Iskaderia military complex, south of
Baghdad, Bazoft had persuaded Daphne Parrish, a British nurse, working
in Baghdad, to take him to the perimeter of the site of the explosion.
There he took photographs and two containers of soil samples. He
attempted to leave Baghdad the following day, but was arrested, with the
samples and photographs at Baghdad airport.
Iraq was again the Western media
and governments’ mega demon. But an Iranian acting as he did, after the
appalling eight year war would surely have led any country, in such
circumstances to act similarly. Witness U.S. paranoia after the tragedy
of losing three buildings. Daphne Parrish’s book: “Prisoner in Baghdad”
gives the lie to any claims of Bazoft’s innocence.
Just two weeks later America was
demanding the chemicals for weapons “by June.” On 25th July 1990, at
the Presidential Palace in Baghdad, America’s Ambassador to Iraq, April
Glaspie assured Saddam Hussein: “We have no opinion on your Arab – Arab
conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James)
Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq
in the 1960′s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.(ix)
“ On 2nd August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait.
The response was the reduction
of Iraq to a “pre-industrial age”, as threatened by James Baker, in the
forty two day blitz from January 17th 1991. On February 15, in the
preamble to cease-fire proposal, Saddam Hussein said “The years 1988 and
1989 saw sustained campaigns in the press and other media and by other
officials in the United States and other nations to pave the way for the
fulfillment of vicious aims (i.e., war.)
Had there been one more “vicious
aim” though? Was the urging, indeed the threatening demands for
chemical weapons ingredients been because the plan had been to use them
and blame Iraq? Is it possible there was a plan to even sacrifice their
own troops in a ploy that would have likely had U.N., backing invasion
and overthrow Saddam Hussein’s government had it been thought to have
used such appalling weapons?
In the event, the chemical companies stood firm and: “left without
the supply of thionyl chloride necessary to meet the production
deadline, five weeks later the Bush administration ‘offered’ to halt
binary production during chemical disarmament negotiations with the
Soviet Union.”(x)
The: “conclusion is that the US
chemical industry’s refusal to produce necessary precursor chemicals,
left the Bush administration with no other option than to fully commit
to chemical disarmament.”
In the event, the chemical – and radiological – weapons the U.S., used were in up to 750 tons of depleted uranium weaponry.
We will have to wait for another
trove of documents to be “liberated” from the U.S., Administration to
affirm whether the theory regarding the pressure for the chemical
weapons is correct. However, given the propaganda parallels in media,
from governments with the current situation with Syria and the near
certainty that chemical horrors are being used by the Western backed
insurgents and blamed on President Assad’s policies, the all is well
worth bearing in mind.
As Brian Becker concluded regarding Saddam’s accusations:
“The Washington Post’s story on the cease-fire proposal
of February 15, 1991 was titled simply: ‘Baghdad’s Conspiracy Theory of
Recent History.’ Some conspiracies theories just happen to be true.”
Notes
