Aftermath of the Gulf War
The New American
February 24, 1992
In the aftermath of the Gulf war, it became readily apparent that the ultimate winner (as intended all along) was the United Nations. On January 16, 1991, two hours after ordering the air war against Iraq to begin, President Bush told the nation that the war represented a "historic moment" that presented "the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order." He said that when it was over there would be "a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peace-keeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN's founders."
Forty-two days later, when the President announced the end of hostilities against Iraq, he stated unequivocally, "This is a victory for the United Nations...."
Mr. Bush was not exaggerating in crediting this victory to the UN. U.S. troops had been sent to war in the Middle East, not to defend the United States and its citizens, but to enforce the United Nations resolutions. When Mr. Bush sought the authority to go to war, he went first to the Security Council of the United Nations, not to the U.S. Congress. When he finally did go to the Congress, just days prior to the UN-established deadline of January 15, 1991, he asked not for a formal declaration of war (as required by the U.S. Constitution) but for acquiescence to the UN resolutions.
In August the President released his National Security Strategy of the United States. In that document, he stated, "In the Gulf, we saw the United Nations playing the role dreamed of by its founders, with the world's leading nations orchestrating and sanctioning collective action against aggression." He added, "I hope history will record that the Gulf crisis was the crucible of the new world order."
Mr. Bush yearns for the day (as he phrased it during his January 16, 1991 speech) when "no nation can stand against a world united." He made no exception for the United States, raising the spectre of a day when we disagree with some UN edict and an international military juggernaut jams it down our throat.
That day may be drawing closer. In large part because of the UN's role in the Middle East, the opinion molders have been able to polish the image of the world body. In November 1991, veteran pollsters Fred Steeper and Stanley Greenberg polled 1,000 Americans for the Americans Talk Issues survey and found that a surprising number were willing to surrender our national sovereignty to the UN and its sundry agencies. More than one-half (51 percent) agreed that "the U.S. should abide by all World Court decisions, even when they go against us...." And 38 percent agreed that UN resolutions "should rule over the actions and laws of individual countries, where necessary to fulfill essential United Nations functions, including ruling over U.S. laws even when our laws are different." That is exactly the mindset that the new world order advocates seek to achieve.
Green Light?
One of the most revealing incidents demonstrating both deception and cover-up in regard to the Gulf war has been the State Department's continuing attempt to explain away U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie's controversial July 25, 1990 meeting with Saddam Hussein, during which (according to an Iraqi transcript of the meeting which the Department initially acknowledged was "essentially correct") she told Saddam that "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait .... [Secretary of State] James Baker has directed our official spokesman to emphasize this instruction."
Many observers justifiably concluded that Glaspie's comments amounted to a green light for Hussein to invade Kuwait without fear of a U.S. military response. Secretary Baker did not challenge the accuracy of the account, but claimed that Glaspie had not been acting under his personal, explicit instructions during the meeting as (according to the transcript) she had claimed.
Glaspie was quickly placed under wraps by the State Department and held incommunicado until the war was over, after which she was allowed to meet with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (March 20th) and the House Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East (March 21st). The Senate session was truly remarkable. Despite the continuing controversy about her meeting with Saddam (which she neither tape recorded nor documented with written notes), Committee Chairman Claiborne Pell (D-RI) reclassified the hearing as a mere "conversation," gave the official stenographer the afternoon off, and allowed Glaspie to "converse" without being placed under Oath. The ambassador branded the Iraqi transcript "a fabrication" and "disinformation," yet acknowledged that it contained "a great deal" (80 percent by her estimate) that was accurate. She did not deny making her controversial "greenlight" statement, but claimed that she had also told Saddam that "we would defend our vital interests, we would support our friends in the Gulf, we would defend their sovereignty and integrity."
Rather than ask tough questions regarding one of the most crucial events preceding the war, Pell allowed the "conversation" to degenerate into a pro-United Nations lovein. At one point, Glaspie asserted that the UN Charter should become, in fact as well as in theory, part of the law of our land. Pell (who is a member of the CFR) then pulled a copy of the Charter from his pocket and announced that it is always with him. Glaspie acknowledged that she, too, had a copy. No copies of the U.S. Constitution were displayed.
The Senate Committee asked the State Department for records of Glaspie's meeting with Saddam, the instructions she received from Washington, and the cables she had sent relating to her conversation with the Iraqi leader. The Department refused to turn over the documents. In late May, it was announced that Glaspie was taking a year's leave from the State Department to become diplomat-in-residence at the University of California (San Diego).
Copies of Glaspie's cables to her superiors in Washington were eventually leaked to the Washington Post, which reported on July 12th that they showed that she had not taken the rough approach with Saddam that she claimed when "conversing" with the Senate and House panels. The State Department then supplied the cables to the Foreign Relations Committee. The Washington Times reported on July 15th that the classified cables "suggest she played down the possibility that the United States would use force to turn back an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait." It was announced that Glaspie would be promptly recalled to clarify her testimony, but she did not reappear before the committee until November 21st, when she testified in closed session. A transcript of that secret hearing has not been (and will not be) released, according to a committee spokesperson.
Creating the Monster
On February 28, 1991, a U.S. federal grand jury in Atlanta indicted eight persons on fraud, conspiracy, and money-laundering charges involving more than $4 billion in unauthorized loans and credits from the Atlanta branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavore (BNL) to Saddam's regime between 1985 and 1989. According to Facts On File for March 28, 1991, investigators believed that "a substantial portion of the funds was used to finance the import of sensitive 'dual-use' technology from Western countries for Iraq's military machine, including its chemical, nuclear and ballistic missile programs."
The BNL scandal had first come to light in August 1989, and later there were charges that the Bush Administration had attempted to delay the grand jury probe to, among other things, prevent politically embarrassing disclosures in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the U.S. build-up for war. Facts On File noted that about "$1.9 billion worth of the BNL loans had been guaranteed by the U.S. Agriculture Department's export credit arm, Commodity Credit Corp (CCC). Some $347 million of that amount was currently outstanding with little prospect of being repaid by Iraq, and might have to be repaid by the U.S. government" (meaning the taxpayers).
On April 26, 1991, the Financial Times of London reported that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (CFR) had had business links with BNL. A day earlier, Kissinger had confirmed that he had indeed served on BNL's international advisory board until February 1991, but denied having had any knowledge of the bank's ties to Iraq before they were exposed publicly.
On March 11, 1991, the Washington Post reported that on the day before Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Bush Administration had approved the sale of $695,000 worth of advanced data transmission equipment to Baghdad. The sale, which was never completed, was part of some $4.8 million in U.S. technology approved for export to Iraq in the 15 days preceding the invasion. In all, the Reagan and Bush administrations had, from 1985 to 1990, approved 771 export licenses for the sale to Iraq of advanced U.S. products worth $1.5 billion.
The Commerce Department subsequently admitted that $500 million of the goods had actually been delivered during that period (four licenses to sell heavy trucks worth $1 billion had fallen through). Included were such items as advanced computers, electronics, lasers, satellite imaging gear, and specialized machine tools, for purposes such as "jet engine repair, rocket cases, etc." and "scientific research on projectile behavior and terminal ballistics." The Pentagon claimed that it had objected to some sales, but had been overruled by the State and Commerce Departments. The Commerce Department, in turn, claimed that efforts to tighten technology sales to Iraq in the spring of 1990 had been rejected by State Department policy-makers.
To March or Not to March
Many Americans (skeptical conservatives especially) suspected from the very beginning that the war was a carefully plotted charade to promote the United Nations and the new world order, rather than any legitimate interests of the United States. Their suspicions received major corroboration when, on September 11, 1990, Mr. Bush announced in a televised address his "fifth objective" for deploying troops to the Persian Gulf. "Out of these troubled times," the President said, "our fifth objective -- a new world order -- can emerge." Later in the same speech, he made clear what he meant by a new world order when he added, "We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders."
The post-war status of Saddam Hussein provides further evidence that the war was a charade. It would be one thing if Saddam were ousted and brought to trial as a criminal (what less for a modern-day Hitler?). But were he to emerge personally unscathed and politically more entrenched, the implication that the war was more comparable to a rigged professional wrestling match than to an honest confrontation between good and evil (as President Bush attempted to portray it) would be strikingly plausible.
Saddam not only survived, and remained in power, but he was allowed to get away with enough of his military machine intact to crush his internal opposition. According to U.S. officials, he emerged with an army of 300,000 to 500,000 men, 2,000 tanks, 3,500 armored vehicles, and 1,200 artillery pieces. His subsequent efforts to smash the Kurdish insurgents is attributable to military equipment he was allowed to pull back to Iraq from the war theater.
On January 16, 1992, presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzwater acknowledged that President Bush had considered a mission to capture Saddam at the end of the war, but rejected it on the advice of top generals and because of "media criticisms." We were, he said, "already getting increasing media criticism from Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings and others about the 'Highway of Death,' "and "if we had gone on it would have been 10 times worse." (Shortly after the war, Fitzwater had denied the accusation that public relations had been a factor in deciding when and how to end the war.) The "Highway of Death" involved the destruction of cars, buses, trucks, ambulances, tanks, and other vehicles that Iraqi troops were using to flee Kuwait City before allied forces arrived.
Fitzwater added that the lack of a United Nations mandate to pursue Saddam, and the prospect of losing solidarity within the UN coalition, were also factors in the decision to allow Saddam to survive.
During a Public Broadcasting System interview with David Frost (broadcast on March 27, 1991), General H. Norman Schwarzkopf (commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command in the Gulf) asserted that he had recommended that U.S. forces continue the war against Iraq to completion. "Frankly," he said, "my recommendation had been, you know, continue the march. I mean we had them in a rout, and we could have continued to ... reap great destruction upon them.... And the President ... made the decision that ... we should stop at a given time, at a given place that did leave some escape routes open for them to get out, and I think that it was a very humane decision and a very courageous decision on his part also. Because it's ... one of those ones that historians are going to second guess ... forever."
The White House promptly rebuked the General. President Bush told reporters: "All I know is there was total agreement in terms of when this war should end." An Administration official told the New York Times that the "record clearly shows that [Schwarzkopf] was in on this decision and he did not oppose it." And Defense Secretary Cheney (CFR) issued a statement saying that Schwarzkopf had not urged a continuation of the war, but had instead agreed with Cheney and General Colin Powell (CFR) that "we had achieved our military objectives" and that therefore further "killing and destruction" was not required.
On March 29th, a chastened Schwarzkopf revealed that he had called the President the day before to apologize (the President told him that no apology was needed and "not to worry about the incident"). In the General's words, "I agreed 100 percent with the decision" to halt the war. Were he to do the interview again, he said, "I would change the word 'recommend' to say 'we initially planned'" to continue the assault. "Because that's what it was."
Parenthetically, as another commentary on the veracity of wartime information, General Schwarzkopf told Life magazine during a March 1991, interview that the body count system used by the military during the Vietnam War was "a lie" and that he had been "forced to participate in that lie." He revealed that during his second tour of duty in Vietnam (1969-70), when he served as a Lieutenant Colonel, there were many times when "people would call me up on the radio after a battle and say, 'What was your body count.' I'd say, 'I don't know what the body count was.' They'd say, 'Well, make one up. We have to report a body count.'"
Betrayal of the Kurds
The Kurds are a non-Arab people, numbering around 12 million, who have for centuries struggled to break free from foreign domination. Their mountain land of Kurdistan extends across four nations (Iran, northern Iraq, a segment of Turkey, and part of the former Soviet Union). None of the larger powers in the area have been willing to let them form a nation of their own, in part because, as Washington Times columnist Jeremiah O'Leary notes, it "is the curse of the Kurds that they live in one of the truly fertile regions of an otherwise arid area of Eastern Asia astride the Tigris River watershed and atop some of the richest oil lands on earth near Mosul and Kirkuk."
The Kurds temporarily took control of Kirkuk after the Gulf war, but by the end of March 1991, Iraqi troops had retaken it, along with a number of other cities which the Kurds briefly controlled.
The internal revolt against Saddam began on or about March 1st in the southern city of Basra, led by Shi'ite Moslems. Within a week, unrest or revolts had spread to more than two dozen cities. In the north, Kurdish leaders committed their forces to the rebellion against the hated Iraqi dictator.
As late as February 15th, President Bush had urged Saddam's internal opposition to rise up, asserting: "There's another way for the bloodshed to stop and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step down." Associated Press later reported that several intelligence sources had asserted that President Bush had, at about the time the air war began, signed official orders authorizing the CIA to aid the rebel factions inside Iraq. NBC and the Washington Post subsequently reported that the Voice of Free Iraq (a clandestine anti-government radio station that had begun broadcasting on January 2, 1991) was a CIA-sponsored operation which had encouraged Iraqis to unite in "toppling Saddam."
In late March, Bush Administration officials publicly declared that U.S. forces would not move to either support or protect the anti-Saddam rebels. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters on March 26th, "It is good for the stability of the region that [Iraq] maintain its territorial integrity," which was a slap at the Kurds seeking an independent homeland. Western correspondents traveling with the Kurdish insurgents reported that many felt betrayed by the U.S. policy of non-intervention, since President Bush had so often publicly advocated the ouster of Saddam.
Incredibly, Saddam Hussein was allowed to retain helicopters after the war. Needless to say, he promptly employed them against the Kurds and other insurgents. On March 13th, President Bush asserted that Iraq's use of helicopters against the rebel groups "has got to be resolved before we're going to have any permanence to any ceasefire." But 13 days later, when asked if there could be a permanent cease-tim if Saddam continued to employ helicopters militarily, he told reporters: "There will be a ceasefire. That was not a requirement of the United Nations; it's not in the [cease-fire] resolution."
Actually, UN Resolution 686 had specifically demanded that Iraq cease "flights of combat aircraft." On one occasion, the President had suggested that he might order U.S. forces to shoot down Iraqi helicopters flying missions against insurgents. But he did not. Instead, on April 5th he ordered cargo planes to begin dropping food and other supplies to refugees along the Iraq-Turkey border.
General Schwarzkopf, during his March 27th interview with David Frost, explained why the helicopters stayed in Iraqi hands after the war. Iraqi negotiators had told him they needed them to transport government officials during the cease-fire, since the bombing had destroyed most of Iraq's roads and bridges. "That seemed like a reasonable request," Schwarzkopf believed. But, he lamented, "I think I was suckered because I think they intended ... to use those helicopters against the insurrections that were going on."
The betrayal of the Kurds by the U.S. followed essentially the same script as earlier betrayals of Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower (CFR) and anti-communist Cubans at the Bay of Pigs by President John F. Kennedy. The staunchly anti-communist Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower Administration, Ezra Taft Benson, has said of the Hungarian debacle: "We had encouraged the captive nations to believe that we would spring to their defense if and when they made a real surge for freedom. Now when the Hungarians had seemed almost on the verge of successful revolt, we had simply stood aghast while the communist juggernaut rolled over the freedom fighters. I was sick at heart." And U.S. News & World Report for September 17, 1962 noted how President Kennedy had approved the Bay of Pigs invasion plan and had promised air cover to the invaders. "But those planes [B26's with Cuban pilots] didn't take off. The reason: President Kennedy forbade their use .... He decided that the anti-Castro Cubans could not have the support of their own air force during the invasion. Without that support, the invasion failed."
In a report released April 30, 1991, Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer Peter W. Galbraith concluded that the Administration's policy of benign neglect of the Kurds had caused a number of Iraqi military leaders to change their minds about defecting to the rebel side. Such a defection, Galbraith contended, could have lent "decisive force" to the effort to overthrow Hussein. Some "strategically located Iraqi military figures" had contacted the Iraqi opposition in March to discuss an alliance against Hussein, but the U.S. refusal to establish official contact with the rebels was read by the military figures as "a clear indication that the U.S. did not want the popular rebellion to succeed." The leaders consequently did not join the rebels. Galbraith's analysis also charged that military intelligence offered by the Iraqi opposition had been rejected or ignored by the Bush Administration.
The brutal Iraqi assault on the Kurds resulted in a flood of some two million refugees into Turkey and Iran. Incredibly, and despite the extent to which the Administration had gone to portray Saddam as a contemporary Hitler, on April 14th National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft (CFR) asserted on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley: "One of the things we perhaps did not anticipate was the severity of Saddam Hussein's attack against the Kurds, with possibly the intention of solving his Kurdish problems by driving them out."
On April 16th, President Bush announced a plan for U.S., British, and French military personnel to build and operate a number of refugee camps in a "safe zone" for the Kurds in northern Iraq. During the first week of May, a 1,440-member UN "peacekeeping" force took control of the zone and the last U.S. and allied troops left the area on July 12th. That same day, the Defense Department confirmed that U.S. troops would participate in Operation Poised Hammer, the deployment of a multinational military force in Turkey supposedly to protect the Kurds. Five days later, severe clashes between Kurdish and Iraqi troops erupted. Kurdish spokesmen claimed that the fighting had begun when Iraqi secret police fired tear gas and bullets at Kurdish demonstrators. Iraqi officials said the trouble had been instigated by the Kurds. U.S. officials concluded that the Kurds had provoked the violence, so President Bush was able to announce on July 20th that he did not see a reason for Operation Poised Hammer to intervene.
The Clone
While portraying Saddam Hussein as a Hitler-type monster, President Bush welcomed President Hafez al-Assad of Syria (one of America's most reliable Middle East enemies) into the UN-coalition. Assad and Saddam are fierce competitors for power and territory, and it was readily apparent that he joined the coalition in the hope of eventually filling the power vacuum that would occur if Saddam were toppled.
President Assad has an army numbering more than 600,000 men equipped with a state-of-the-art arsenal supplied by the former Soviet Union. On January 11, 1992, it was revealed that Syria was negotiating a $2 billion arms deal for its air force and air defense with Boris Yeltsin's Russia, to include sophisticated MiG-29 and Sukhoi 24 jets, and SAM-10 and SAM-11 air defense missiles. According to news accounts, both sides were anxious to keep the deal secret, but the details were leaked to defense officials in the United States and Israel.
The State Department lists Syria among the nations aiding and abetting international terrorism. Assad backed the terrorist groups in Lebanon that bombed U.S. targets in 1982 and 1983, killing 241 U.S. Marines (93 more than the total U.S. combat deaths during the Gulf war), a U.S. ambassador, and the cream of the CIA's Middle East analysts.
On February 7, 1991, the New York Times reported that two or three undercover agents who had infiltrated a Syrian-based terrorist group at the behest of Israel's Mossad intelligence service had been exposed and killed after the U.S. provided the Assad regime with information about terrorist activity in Syria. According to the Times, the agents were liquidated after Secretary of State James A. Baker III met with coalition-partner Assad in September 1990. As noted by Facts On File for March 7, 1991, "Baker reportedly gave Assad detailed U.S. intelligence information that the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLPGC) had masterminded the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland," which killed 270 persons (mostly Americans).
While a link between the Baker-Assad meeting and the killings had not been absolutely proven, the sequence of events led some U.S. officials to wonder if the terrorists had been given information by Assad's government enabling them to pinpoint the double agents. According to the Times, some U.S. intelligence officials had argued in advance that telling Syria too much could endanger agents, operations, and information-gathering methods, but the Bush Administration insisted that the evidence should be "impressive."
State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler, while refusing to confirm that any deaths had even occurred, told reporters that any suggestion that Baker had supplied information "that led to the death of any individual is categorically untrue."
On February 1, 1991, the State Department released its annual human rights report, accusing the Assad regime of continuing "major human rights abuses -- including torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, and denial of freedom of speech, press, association and the right of citizens to change their government." In 1982, Assad had suppressed riots in the central city of Hama with a military bombardment that levelled the center of the city and killed an estimated 20,000 persons.
On September 16th, the Lebanese parliament ratified a security pact with Syria giving the Assad regime virtual control over Lebanese internal affairs. It supplements a broader cooperation treaty signed by the two nations in May, and includes a vaguely-worded clause allowing the security forces of each country the right to arrest and prosecute "criminals" in the other country. In short, Assad is to Lebanon roughly what Saddam Hussein tried to be to Kuwait, yet the Syrian dictator remains in the Bush Administration's good graces.
On November 7th, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasir Arafat met with Assad in Damascus. Two days later, Syria announced that it would allow the Fatah faction of the PLO to reopen its offices in the Syrian capital. The offices had been closed in May 1983, after Syria backed ultra-radical PLO splinter factions that were trying to oust Arafat.
Disarming and Arming
Since April, Iraq and a team of UN inspectors have been playing a game of cat-and-mouse regarding the status of Saddam's nuclear, chemical, biological, and ballistic missile capability.
In late June, Iraqi soldiers fired warning shots at the inspectors, presumably to keep them from scrutinizing equipment for enriching uranium that the Iraqis were trying to hide. The inspectors were videotaping a truck convoy allegedly carrying crates containing calutrons (heavy steel containers rigged with electric generators for use in preparing weapons-grade uranium). In mid-July the UN inspectors admitted that the Iraqis had been transporting damaged calutrons to sites in the desert for burial. The Iraqis had dug them up so the UN team could see for itself, and the inspectors confirmed that they were indeed the same ones that had been videotaped in June.
On September 18th, President Bush (who had refused to help the Kurds) authorized U.S. air force warplanes to escort UN inspectors in Iraqi territory, after Iraq refused to allow the UN arms hunters to fly their own helicopters in Iraqi airspace. Four days earlier, in a report to the Security Council, the inspectors had estimated that Iraq would have been capable of building two or three atomic weapons a year by the mid-1990s, had its nuclear production facilities not been destroyed during the Gulf war. The report admitted, however, that inspectors had found no conclusive evidence that Iraq had even begun to design, much less construct, nuclear weapons.
While world attention has been focused on Iraq, other regimes in the region have been quietly enhancing their military machines. The Pentagon admits that during the past two years the former Soviet Union transferred weapons worth about $2 billion to Iran, with another billion-dollar delivery expected this year from Boris Yeltsin's Russia. The hardware includes advanced jet fighters, missiles, and heavy artillery. On January 7, 1992, the Los Angeles Times quoted intelligence sources as saying that Iran was also receiving weapons from Argentina and North Korea. Two days later, Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced the reports, asserting that Washington had no business questioning Iran's weapons program.
In the meantime, President Bush has lifted the ban on U.S. purchases of Iranian oil, supposedly to help Iran repay claims by Western businesses dating back to the early 1980s and rebuild an economy still recovering from eight years of war with Iraq. It seems reasonable to assume, however, that some of the funds may be channeled to pay for weapons.
In recent years, Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has openly called for the development of nuclear weapons programs in Iran and other Moslem nations, supposedly to counterbalance Israel's atomic arsenal. North Korea has reportedly helped enhance Iran's "nuclear research" capability. The People's Mujahideen (the main group opposed to the current Iranian government) recently claimed that Red Chinese officials had visited Tehran and pledged to provide as much help as possible for Iran's nuclear program.
In late October, the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence officials had determined that Iran was seeking more extensive technology than needed to launch a civilian nuclear power program. Among the equipment said by U.S. officials to have been recently shipped to Iran from Red China was a calutron (of the sort which sent the UN inspectors into a dither when they discovered that Saddam's troops were burying damaged ones in the desert).
In 1989, then-CIA Director William Webster told Congress that "Syria began producing chemical warfare agents and munitions in the mid-1980's and currently has a chemical warfare production facility." On January 17, 1992, the Washington Times reported that "North Korea had agreed to supply new ballistic missiles to Syria, whose arsenal already is brimming with missiles capable of hitting Israel's population centers." Syria has also purchased Scud missiles from North Korea and is said to be seeking help from Red China in developing chemical or biological missile warheads and obtaining a nuclear reactor.
Shortly before the UN inspectors arrived in Iraq, the Washington Post reported (April 20th) that Red China was also helping Algeria to construct a nuclear reactor that could eventually be used to produce fuel for nuclear weapons. Algeria's ambassador to the U.S. subsequently defended the deal claiming that it had obtained the reactor in 1983 (prior to Red China's 1984 pledge to limit the export of nuclear-weapons technology). Experts cited by the Post calculated that the facility, when completed, could yield 18 pounds of plutonium annually, enough to manufacture one bomb per year. On April 28th, the Sunday Times of London, citing a CIA briefing to congressional intelligence committees, reported that Red China was advising Algeria on how to fit a warhead to a missile delivery system.
It has also been reported that Red China is helping to arm Pakistan. During the Senate debate about extending Red China's most-favored-nation trade status (see "Asia" section), congressional opposition to the extension had been based in part on Red China's alleged role in helping Pakistan, Algeria, and Iran develop nuclear arms. On October 30th, the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs held a closed-door briefing on the issue with intelligence and State Department officials. Ultra-liberal Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) told reporters afterward that he was convinced that the Bush Administration had known of the Red Chinese-Iranian nuclear ties and had hidden the knowledge from Congress to help assure approval of the MFN extension legislation.
Saddam Through In '92?
In January of this year, it was revealed that Saudi Arabia has been pressuring the Bush Administration to organize a sizable covert action campaign to divide the Iraqi army and topple Saddam Hussein. Saddam's days at the Iraqi helm may indeed be numbered. It is, after all, an election year in the United States, and (as reported by the New York Times) the "White House remains deeply concerned that the Iraqi leader is still in power at the outset of a presidential election year in which his survival has become a political issue. The ouster of Saddam before November's election would remove the shadow that the Iraqi leader casts over Bush's campaign and eliminate the possibility that Saddam could do harm to Bush's re-election effort through provocative statements emanating from Baghdad." And more than mere "provocative statements" would be the prospect of a major election-eve assault on the Kurds, or some other military venture, that could undermine the President's re-election bid.
Some analysts speculate that arrangements may be made for Saddam to go into permanent exile, a move that would conveniently solve President Bush's political problem while permitting the Iraqi despot to live out his life in style. It is an interesting possibility, and it will be recalled that President Bush told reporters on April 16, 1991 that he might favor a deal that would assure Saddam "a happy life forevermore" in exile, in return for guarantees that the Iraqi president would never return to Iraq. "We want him out of there so badly and I think it's so important to the tranquility of ... Iraq that, under that condition, we might" make such a deal, the President said.
Forever And Ever
Prior to the war, the U.S. had a limited military presence in the region. Despite assurances that U.S. troops would return home once the conflict was over, it is now apparent that plans were afoot from the start to establish a permanent U.S. military beachhead in the area. As late as mid-April, Bush Administration officials were expressing the hope (but carefully declined to guarantee) that the U.S. military presence would not extend for months or years. Meanwhile, negotiations were in the works to assure that the U.S. presence would indeed be permanent.
On May 9th, following four days of talks with officials representing nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates), Secretary of Defense Cheney told reporters that he had reached a "broad agreement" on the storage of U.S. military equipment in the region, and on joint training exercises that would rotate U.S. troops into the area on a regular basis. Arrangements were to be worked out with each individual country.
On June 13th, Defense Department officials announced that the U.S. was keeping a squadron of F-117A stealth fighters in Saudi Arabia and intended to send fresh fighter-bomber units to the Gulf region as part of an "open-ended" security arrangement. And on September 4th, the U.S. initialed the first pact resulting from the May agreement with the GCC, a ten-year security arrangement allowing U.S. armed forces to stockpile equipment and conduct military exercises in Kuwait. A Defense Department spokesman claimed that the pact did not "in any way open the door for permanent [U.S.] military bases in Kuwait," but the camel's nose, so to speak, is under the tent.
The Hostage Game
The attempt to reconstruct and enhance the image and influence of the United Nations during 1991 was so all-encompassing that, when the last of the hostages held for years by terrorists in Lebanon were released, the UN was given much of the credit for its role in supposedly "negotiating" their freedom. The last living American captive to be freed (on December 4th) was journalist Terry Waite. The decomposed body of Lieutenant Colonel William R. Higgins, who was kidnapped while serving as a member of a UN "peacekeeping" force in southern Lebanon in 1988 (and hanged by his captors in 1989), was found on a street in Lebanon on the evening of December 21st. A total of 17 Americans were kidnapped from 1984 to 1988. Three were killed or died in captivity, two escaped, and the rest were eventually released.
On January 19, 1992, the Washington Post, basing its information on unidentified "Bush administration officials," reported that "Iran had financed the confinement and upkeep of the American hostages," and had "also paid their captors $1 million to $2 million for each released." Iran's ambassador to the United Nations denied the report, which if true, would make boasting about the UN's influence on the hostage release equivalent to boasting about how an ant shakes a bridge while crossing it with an elephant.
If you wonder how Iran came up with the money to pay for the hostages, consider this possibility. On November 26th the U.S. agreed to pay Iran $278 million in compensation for U.S.-Iranian arms agreements canceled after the 1979 revolution that ousted the pro-Western Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlavi and brought the anti-American Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power. The agreement (covering equipment worth about $9 billion) had been signed with the Shah, but had been canceled following his ouster. U.S. officials denied that the U.S. had agreed to the bizarre settlement in return for the release of the hostages.
And Iran apparently included room-and-board in the hostage deal. On Christmas Eve, Associated Press reported that the "reputed leader [Imad Mughniyeh] of the Shi'ite Muslim extremists who held Westerners hostage in Lebanon has moved to Teheran, apparently for safety, after freeing the last of his captives...." And as early as December 8th, London's Sunday Times had quoted Israeli intelligence sources as saying that 30 to 40 of the kidnappers had fled to Iran for protection and new identities.
And, speaking of terrorists, it was reported on June 7th that Saudi Arabia had permitted the renegade faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization headed by terrorist leader Abu Nidal (a.k.a. Sabry al-Banna) to establish offices in Saudi territory. Saudi Arabia had broken off relations with the main PLO due to PLO chairman Yasir Arafat's outspoken pro-Iraqi stance during the Gulf war. Abu Nidal, who is also linked with Iraq, had the good sense to keep quiet about it during the war.
Related Articles:
1992 - Making of a Monster: How the United States Helped Build Iraq's War Machine
1998 - Arming Saddam - If Saddam Hussein Didn't Exist, We Would Have to Invent Him
The New American
February 24, 1992
In the aftermath of the Gulf war, it became readily apparent that the ultimate winner (as intended all along) was the United Nations. On January 16, 1991, two hours after ordering the air war against Iraq to begin, President Bush told the nation that the war represented a "historic moment" that presented "the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order." He said that when it was over there would be "a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peace-keeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN's founders."
Forty-two days later, when the President announced the end of hostilities against Iraq, he stated unequivocally, "This is a victory for the United Nations...."
Mr. Bush was not exaggerating in crediting this victory to the UN. U.S. troops had been sent to war in the Middle East, not to defend the United States and its citizens, but to enforce the United Nations resolutions. When Mr. Bush sought the authority to go to war, he went first to the Security Council of the United Nations, not to the U.S. Congress. When he finally did go to the Congress, just days prior to the UN-established deadline of January 15, 1991, he asked not for a formal declaration of war (as required by the U.S. Constitution) but for acquiescence to the UN resolutions.
In August the President released his National Security Strategy of the United States. In that document, he stated, "In the Gulf, we saw the United Nations playing the role dreamed of by its founders, with the world's leading nations orchestrating and sanctioning collective action against aggression." He added, "I hope history will record that the Gulf crisis was the crucible of the new world order."
Mr. Bush yearns for the day (as he phrased it during his January 16, 1991 speech) when "no nation can stand against a world united." He made no exception for the United States, raising the spectre of a day when we disagree with some UN edict and an international military juggernaut jams it down our throat.
That day may be drawing closer. In large part because of the UN's role in the Middle East, the opinion molders have been able to polish the image of the world body. In November 1991, veteran pollsters Fred Steeper and Stanley Greenberg polled 1,000 Americans for the Americans Talk Issues survey and found that a surprising number were willing to surrender our national sovereignty to the UN and its sundry agencies. More than one-half (51 percent) agreed that "the U.S. should abide by all World Court decisions, even when they go against us...." And 38 percent agreed that UN resolutions "should rule over the actions and laws of individual countries, where necessary to fulfill essential United Nations functions, including ruling over U.S. laws even when our laws are different." That is exactly the mindset that the new world order advocates seek to achieve.
Green Light?
One of the most revealing incidents demonstrating both deception and cover-up in regard to the Gulf war has been the State Department's continuing attempt to explain away U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie's controversial July 25, 1990 meeting with Saddam Hussein, during which (according to an Iraqi transcript of the meeting which the Department initially acknowledged was "essentially correct") she told Saddam that "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait .... [Secretary of State] James Baker has directed our official spokesman to emphasize this instruction."
Many observers justifiably concluded that Glaspie's comments amounted to a green light for Hussein to invade Kuwait without fear of a U.S. military response. Secretary Baker did not challenge the accuracy of the account, but claimed that Glaspie had not been acting under his personal, explicit instructions during the meeting as (according to the transcript) she had claimed.
Glaspie was quickly placed under wraps by the State Department and held incommunicado until the war was over, after which she was allowed to meet with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (March 20th) and the House Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East (March 21st). The Senate session was truly remarkable. Despite the continuing controversy about her meeting with Saddam (which she neither tape recorded nor documented with written notes), Committee Chairman Claiborne Pell (D-RI) reclassified the hearing as a mere "conversation," gave the official stenographer the afternoon off, and allowed Glaspie to "converse" without being placed under Oath. The ambassador branded the Iraqi transcript "a fabrication" and "disinformation," yet acknowledged that it contained "a great deal" (80 percent by her estimate) that was accurate. She did not deny making her controversial "greenlight" statement, but claimed that she had also told Saddam that "we would defend our vital interests, we would support our friends in the Gulf, we would defend their sovereignty and integrity."
Rather than ask tough questions regarding one of the most crucial events preceding the war, Pell allowed the "conversation" to degenerate into a pro-United Nations lovein. At one point, Glaspie asserted that the UN Charter should become, in fact as well as in theory, part of the law of our land. Pell (who is a member of the CFR) then pulled a copy of the Charter from his pocket and announced that it is always with him. Glaspie acknowledged that she, too, had a copy. No copies of the U.S. Constitution were displayed.
The Senate Committee asked the State Department for records of Glaspie's meeting with Saddam, the instructions she received from Washington, and the cables she had sent relating to her conversation with the Iraqi leader. The Department refused to turn over the documents. In late May, it was announced that Glaspie was taking a year's leave from the State Department to become diplomat-in-residence at the University of California (San Diego).
Copies of Glaspie's cables to her superiors in Washington were eventually leaked to the Washington Post, which reported on July 12th that they showed that she had not taken the rough approach with Saddam that she claimed when "conversing" with the Senate and House panels. The State Department then supplied the cables to the Foreign Relations Committee. The Washington Times reported on July 15th that the classified cables "suggest she played down the possibility that the United States would use force to turn back an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait." It was announced that Glaspie would be promptly recalled to clarify her testimony, but she did not reappear before the committee until November 21st, when she testified in closed session. A transcript of that secret hearing has not been (and will not be) released, according to a committee spokesperson.
Creating the Monster
On February 28, 1991, a U.S. federal grand jury in Atlanta indicted eight persons on fraud, conspiracy, and money-laundering charges involving more than $4 billion in unauthorized loans and credits from the Atlanta branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavore (BNL) to Saddam's regime between 1985 and 1989. According to Facts On File for March 28, 1991, investigators believed that "a substantial portion of the funds was used to finance the import of sensitive 'dual-use' technology from Western countries for Iraq's military machine, including its chemical, nuclear and ballistic missile programs."
The BNL scandal had first come to light in August 1989, and later there were charges that the Bush Administration had attempted to delay the grand jury probe to, among other things, prevent politically embarrassing disclosures in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the U.S. build-up for war. Facts On File noted that about "$1.9 billion worth of the BNL loans had been guaranteed by the U.S. Agriculture Department's export credit arm, Commodity Credit Corp (CCC). Some $347 million of that amount was currently outstanding with little prospect of being repaid by Iraq, and might have to be repaid by the U.S. government" (meaning the taxpayers).
On April 26, 1991, the Financial Times of London reported that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (CFR) had had business links with BNL. A day earlier, Kissinger had confirmed that he had indeed served on BNL's international advisory board until February 1991, but denied having had any knowledge of the bank's ties to Iraq before they were exposed publicly.
On March 11, 1991, the Washington Post reported that on the day before Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Bush Administration had approved the sale of $695,000 worth of advanced data transmission equipment to Baghdad. The sale, which was never completed, was part of some $4.8 million in U.S. technology approved for export to Iraq in the 15 days preceding the invasion. In all, the Reagan and Bush administrations had, from 1985 to 1990, approved 771 export licenses for the sale to Iraq of advanced U.S. products worth $1.5 billion.
The Commerce Department subsequently admitted that $500 million of the goods had actually been delivered during that period (four licenses to sell heavy trucks worth $1 billion had fallen through). Included were such items as advanced computers, electronics, lasers, satellite imaging gear, and specialized machine tools, for purposes such as "jet engine repair, rocket cases, etc." and "scientific research on projectile behavior and terminal ballistics." The Pentagon claimed that it had objected to some sales, but had been overruled by the State and Commerce Departments. The Commerce Department, in turn, claimed that efforts to tighten technology sales to Iraq in the spring of 1990 had been rejected by State Department policy-makers.
To March or Not to March
Many Americans (skeptical conservatives especially) suspected from the very beginning that the war was a carefully plotted charade to promote the United Nations and the new world order, rather than any legitimate interests of the United States. Their suspicions received major corroboration when, on September 11, 1990, Mr. Bush announced in a televised address his "fifth objective" for deploying troops to the Persian Gulf. "Out of these troubled times," the President said, "our fifth objective -- a new world order -- can emerge." Later in the same speech, he made clear what he meant by a new world order when he added, "We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders."
The post-war status of Saddam Hussein provides further evidence that the war was a charade. It would be one thing if Saddam were ousted and brought to trial as a criminal (what less for a modern-day Hitler?). But were he to emerge personally unscathed and politically more entrenched, the implication that the war was more comparable to a rigged professional wrestling match than to an honest confrontation between good and evil (as President Bush attempted to portray it) would be strikingly plausible.
Saddam not only survived, and remained in power, but he was allowed to get away with enough of his military machine intact to crush his internal opposition. According to U.S. officials, he emerged with an army of 300,000 to 500,000 men, 2,000 tanks, 3,500 armored vehicles, and 1,200 artillery pieces. His subsequent efforts to smash the Kurdish insurgents is attributable to military equipment he was allowed to pull back to Iraq from the war theater.
On January 16, 1992, presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzwater acknowledged that President Bush had considered a mission to capture Saddam at the end of the war, but rejected it on the advice of top generals and because of "media criticisms." We were, he said, "already getting increasing media criticism from Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings and others about the 'Highway of Death,' "and "if we had gone on it would have been 10 times worse." (Shortly after the war, Fitzwater had denied the accusation that public relations had been a factor in deciding when and how to end the war.) The "Highway of Death" involved the destruction of cars, buses, trucks, ambulances, tanks, and other vehicles that Iraqi troops were using to flee Kuwait City before allied forces arrived.
Fitzwater added that the lack of a United Nations mandate to pursue Saddam, and the prospect of losing solidarity within the UN coalition, were also factors in the decision to allow Saddam to survive.
During a Public Broadcasting System interview with David Frost (broadcast on March 27, 1991), General H. Norman Schwarzkopf (commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command in the Gulf) asserted that he had recommended that U.S. forces continue the war against Iraq to completion. "Frankly," he said, "my recommendation had been, you know, continue the march. I mean we had them in a rout, and we could have continued to ... reap great destruction upon them.... And the President ... made the decision that ... we should stop at a given time, at a given place that did leave some escape routes open for them to get out, and I think that it was a very humane decision and a very courageous decision on his part also. Because it's ... one of those ones that historians are going to second guess ... forever."
The White House promptly rebuked the General. President Bush told reporters: "All I know is there was total agreement in terms of when this war should end." An Administration official told the New York Times that the "record clearly shows that [Schwarzkopf] was in on this decision and he did not oppose it." And Defense Secretary Cheney (CFR) issued a statement saying that Schwarzkopf had not urged a continuation of the war, but had instead agreed with Cheney and General Colin Powell (CFR) that "we had achieved our military objectives" and that therefore further "killing and destruction" was not required.
On March 29th, a chastened Schwarzkopf revealed that he had called the President the day before to apologize (the President told him that no apology was needed and "not to worry about the incident"). In the General's words, "I agreed 100 percent with the decision" to halt the war. Were he to do the interview again, he said, "I would change the word 'recommend' to say 'we initially planned'" to continue the assault. "Because that's what it was."
Parenthetically, as another commentary on the veracity of wartime information, General Schwarzkopf told Life magazine during a March 1991, interview that the body count system used by the military during the Vietnam War was "a lie" and that he had been "forced to participate in that lie." He revealed that during his second tour of duty in Vietnam (1969-70), when he served as a Lieutenant Colonel, there were many times when "people would call me up on the radio after a battle and say, 'What was your body count.' I'd say, 'I don't know what the body count was.' They'd say, 'Well, make one up. We have to report a body count.'"
Betrayal of the Kurds
The Kurds are a non-Arab people, numbering around 12 million, who have for centuries struggled to break free from foreign domination. Their mountain land of Kurdistan extends across four nations (Iran, northern Iraq, a segment of Turkey, and part of the former Soviet Union). None of the larger powers in the area have been willing to let them form a nation of their own, in part because, as Washington Times columnist Jeremiah O'Leary notes, it "is the curse of the Kurds that they live in one of the truly fertile regions of an otherwise arid area of Eastern Asia astride the Tigris River watershed and atop some of the richest oil lands on earth near Mosul and Kirkuk."
The Kurds temporarily took control of Kirkuk after the Gulf war, but by the end of March 1991, Iraqi troops had retaken it, along with a number of other cities which the Kurds briefly controlled.
The internal revolt against Saddam began on or about March 1st in the southern city of Basra, led by Shi'ite Moslems. Within a week, unrest or revolts had spread to more than two dozen cities. In the north, Kurdish leaders committed their forces to the rebellion against the hated Iraqi dictator.
As late as February 15th, President Bush had urged Saddam's internal opposition to rise up, asserting: "There's another way for the bloodshed to stop and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step down." Associated Press later reported that several intelligence sources had asserted that President Bush had, at about the time the air war began, signed official orders authorizing the CIA to aid the rebel factions inside Iraq. NBC and the Washington Post subsequently reported that the Voice of Free Iraq (a clandestine anti-government radio station that had begun broadcasting on January 2, 1991) was a CIA-sponsored operation which had encouraged Iraqis to unite in "toppling Saddam."
In late March, Bush Administration officials publicly declared that U.S. forces would not move to either support or protect the anti-Saddam rebels. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters on March 26th, "It is good for the stability of the region that [Iraq] maintain its territorial integrity," which was a slap at the Kurds seeking an independent homeland. Western correspondents traveling with the Kurdish insurgents reported that many felt betrayed by the U.S. policy of non-intervention, since President Bush had so often publicly advocated the ouster of Saddam.
Incredibly, Saddam Hussein was allowed to retain helicopters after the war. Needless to say, he promptly employed them against the Kurds and other insurgents. On March 13th, President Bush asserted that Iraq's use of helicopters against the rebel groups "has got to be resolved before we're going to have any permanence to any ceasefire." But 13 days later, when asked if there could be a permanent cease-tim if Saddam continued to employ helicopters militarily, he told reporters: "There will be a ceasefire. That was not a requirement of the United Nations; it's not in the [cease-fire] resolution."
Actually, UN Resolution 686 had specifically demanded that Iraq cease "flights of combat aircraft." On one occasion, the President had suggested that he might order U.S. forces to shoot down Iraqi helicopters flying missions against insurgents. But he did not. Instead, on April 5th he ordered cargo planes to begin dropping food and other supplies to refugees along the Iraq-Turkey border.
General Schwarzkopf, during his March 27th interview with David Frost, explained why the helicopters stayed in Iraqi hands after the war. Iraqi negotiators had told him they needed them to transport government officials during the cease-fire, since the bombing had destroyed most of Iraq's roads and bridges. "That seemed like a reasonable request," Schwarzkopf believed. But, he lamented, "I think I was suckered because I think they intended ... to use those helicopters against the insurrections that were going on."
The betrayal of the Kurds by the U.S. followed essentially the same script as earlier betrayals of Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower (CFR) and anti-communist Cubans at the Bay of Pigs by President John F. Kennedy. The staunchly anti-communist Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower Administration, Ezra Taft Benson, has said of the Hungarian debacle: "We had encouraged the captive nations to believe that we would spring to their defense if and when they made a real surge for freedom. Now when the Hungarians had seemed almost on the verge of successful revolt, we had simply stood aghast while the communist juggernaut rolled over the freedom fighters. I was sick at heart." And U.S. News & World Report for September 17, 1962 noted how President Kennedy had approved the Bay of Pigs invasion plan and had promised air cover to the invaders. "But those planes [B26's with Cuban pilots] didn't take off. The reason: President Kennedy forbade their use .... He decided that the anti-Castro Cubans could not have the support of their own air force during the invasion. Without that support, the invasion failed."
In a report released April 30, 1991, Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer Peter W. Galbraith concluded that the Administration's policy of benign neglect of the Kurds had caused a number of Iraqi military leaders to change their minds about defecting to the rebel side. Such a defection, Galbraith contended, could have lent "decisive force" to the effort to overthrow Hussein. Some "strategically located Iraqi military figures" had contacted the Iraqi opposition in March to discuss an alliance against Hussein, but the U.S. refusal to establish official contact with the rebels was read by the military figures as "a clear indication that the U.S. did not want the popular rebellion to succeed." The leaders consequently did not join the rebels. Galbraith's analysis also charged that military intelligence offered by the Iraqi opposition had been rejected or ignored by the Bush Administration.
The brutal Iraqi assault on the Kurds resulted in a flood of some two million refugees into Turkey and Iran. Incredibly, and despite the extent to which the Administration had gone to portray Saddam as a contemporary Hitler, on April 14th National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft (CFR) asserted on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley: "One of the things we perhaps did not anticipate was the severity of Saddam Hussein's attack against the Kurds, with possibly the intention of solving his Kurdish problems by driving them out."
On April 16th, President Bush announced a plan for U.S., British, and French military personnel to build and operate a number of refugee camps in a "safe zone" for the Kurds in northern Iraq. During the first week of May, a 1,440-member UN "peacekeeping" force took control of the zone and the last U.S. and allied troops left the area on July 12th. That same day, the Defense Department confirmed that U.S. troops would participate in Operation Poised Hammer, the deployment of a multinational military force in Turkey supposedly to protect the Kurds. Five days later, severe clashes between Kurdish and Iraqi troops erupted. Kurdish spokesmen claimed that the fighting had begun when Iraqi secret police fired tear gas and bullets at Kurdish demonstrators. Iraqi officials said the trouble had been instigated by the Kurds. U.S. officials concluded that the Kurds had provoked the violence, so President Bush was able to announce on July 20th that he did not see a reason for Operation Poised Hammer to intervene.
The Clone
While portraying Saddam Hussein as a Hitler-type monster, President Bush welcomed President Hafez al-Assad of Syria (one of America's most reliable Middle East enemies) into the UN-coalition. Assad and Saddam are fierce competitors for power and territory, and it was readily apparent that he joined the coalition in the hope of eventually filling the power vacuum that would occur if Saddam were toppled.
President Assad has an army numbering more than 600,000 men equipped with a state-of-the-art arsenal supplied by the former Soviet Union. On January 11, 1992, it was revealed that Syria was negotiating a $2 billion arms deal for its air force and air defense with Boris Yeltsin's Russia, to include sophisticated MiG-29 and Sukhoi 24 jets, and SAM-10 and SAM-11 air defense missiles. According to news accounts, both sides were anxious to keep the deal secret, but the details were leaked to defense officials in the United States and Israel.
The State Department lists Syria among the nations aiding and abetting international terrorism. Assad backed the terrorist groups in Lebanon that bombed U.S. targets in 1982 and 1983, killing 241 U.S. Marines (93 more than the total U.S. combat deaths during the Gulf war), a U.S. ambassador, and the cream of the CIA's Middle East analysts.
On February 7, 1991, the New York Times reported that two or three undercover agents who had infiltrated a Syrian-based terrorist group at the behest of Israel's Mossad intelligence service had been exposed and killed after the U.S. provided the Assad regime with information about terrorist activity in Syria. According to the Times, the agents were liquidated after Secretary of State James A. Baker III met with coalition-partner Assad in September 1990. As noted by Facts On File for March 7, 1991, "Baker reportedly gave Assad detailed U.S. intelligence information that the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLPGC) had masterminded the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland," which killed 270 persons (mostly Americans).
While a link between the Baker-Assad meeting and the killings had not been absolutely proven, the sequence of events led some U.S. officials to wonder if the terrorists had been given information by Assad's government enabling them to pinpoint the double agents. According to the Times, some U.S. intelligence officials had argued in advance that telling Syria too much could endanger agents, operations, and information-gathering methods, but the Bush Administration insisted that the evidence should be "impressive."
State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler, while refusing to confirm that any deaths had even occurred, told reporters that any suggestion that Baker had supplied information "that led to the death of any individual is categorically untrue."
On February 1, 1991, the State Department released its annual human rights report, accusing the Assad regime of continuing "major human rights abuses -- including torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, and denial of freedom of speech, press, association and the right of citizens to change their government." In 1982, Assad had suppressed riots in the central city of Hama with a military bombardment that levelled the center of the city and killed an estimated 20,000 persons.
On September 16th, the Lebanese parliament ratified a security pact with Syria giving the Assad regime virtual control over Lebanese internal affairs. It supplements a broader cooperation treaty signed by the two nations in May, and includes a vaguely-worded clause allowing the security forces of each country the right to arrest and prosecute "criminals" in the other country. In short, Assad is to Lebanon roughly what Saddam Hussein tried to be to Kuwait, yet the Syrian dictator remains in the Bush Administration's good graces.
On November 7th, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasir Arafat met with Assad in Damascus. Two days later, Syria announced that it would allow the Fatah faction of the PLO to reopen its offices in the Syrian capital. The offices had been closed in May 1983, after Syria backed ultra-radical PLO splinter factions that were trying to oust Arafat.
Disarming and Arming
Since April, Iraq and a team of UN inspectors have been playing a game of cat-and-mouse regarding the status of Saddam's nuclear, chemical, biological, and ballistic missile capability.
In late June, Iraqi soldiers fired warning shots at the inspectors, presumably to keep them from scrutinizing equipment for enriching uranium that the Iraqis were trying to hide. The inspectors were videotaping a truck convoy allegedly carrying crates containing calutrons (heavy steel containers rigged with electric generators for use in preparing weapons-grade uranium). In mid-July the UN inspectors admitted that the Iraqis had been transporting damaged calutrons to sites in the desert for burial. The Iraqis had dug them up so the UN team could see for itself, and the inspectors confirmed that they were indeed the same ones that had been videotaped in June.
On September 18th, President Bush (who had refused to help the Kurds) authorized U.S. air force warplanes to escort UN inspectors in Iraqi territory, after Iraq refused to allow the UN arms hunters to fly their own helicopters in Iraqi airspace. Four days earlier, in a report to the Security Council, the inspectors had estimated that Iraq would have been capable of building two or three atomic weapons a year by the mid-1990s, had its nuclear production facilities not been destroyed during the Gulf war. The report admitted, however, that inspectors had found no conclusive evidence that Iraq had even begun to design, much less construct, nuclear weapons.
While world attention has been focused on Iraq, other regimes in the region have been quietly enhancing their military machines. The Pentagon admits that during the past two years the former Soviet Union transferred weapons worth about $2 billion to Iran, with another billion-dollar delivery expected this year from Boris Yeltsin's Russia. The hardware includes advanced jet fighters, missiles, and heavy artillery. On January 7, 1992, the Los Angeles Times quoted intelligence sources as saying that Iran was also receiving weapons from Argentina and North Korea. Two days later, Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced the reports, asserting that Washington had no business questioning Iran's weapons program.
In the meantime, President Bush has lifted the ban on U.S. purchases of Iranian oil, supposedly to help Iran repay claims by Western businesses dating back to the early 1980s and rebuild an economy still recovering from eight years of war with Iraq. It seems reasonable to assume, however, that some of the funds may be channeled to pay for weapons.
In recent years, Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has openly called for the development of nuclear weapons programs in Iran and other Moslem nations, supposedly to counterbalance Israel's atomic arsenal. North Korea has reportedly helped enhance Iran's "nuclear research" capability. The People's Mujahideen (the main group opposed to the current Iranian government) recently claimed that Red Chinese officials had visited Tehran and pledged to provide as much help as possible for Iran's nuclear program.
In late October, the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence officials had determined that Iran was seeking more extensive technology than needed to launch a civilian nuclear power program. Among the equipment said by U.S. officials to have been recently shipped to Iran from Red China was a calutron (of the sort which sent the UN inspectors into a dither when they discovered that Saddam's troops were burying damaged ones in the desert).
In 1989, then-CIA Director William Webster told Congress that "Syria began producing chemical warfare agents and munitions in the mid-1980's and currently has a chemical warfare production facility." On January 17, 1992, the Washington Times reported that "North Korea had agreed to supply new ballistic missiles to Syria, whose arsenal already is brimming with missiles capable of hitting Israel's population centers." Syria has also purchased Scud missiles from North Korea and is said to be seeking help from Red China in developing chemical or biological missile warheads and obtaining a nuclear reactor.
Shortly before the UN inspectors arrived in Iraq, the Washington Post reported (April 20th) that Red China was also helping Algeria to construct a nuclear reactor that could eventually be used to produce fuel for nuclear weapons. Algeria's ambassador to the U.S. subsequently defended the deal claiming that it had obtained the reactor in 1983 (prior to Red China's 1984 pledge to limit the export of nuclear-weapons technology). Experts cited by the Post calculated that the facility, when completed, could yield 18 pounds of plutonium annually, enough to manufacture one bomb per year. On April 28th, the Sunday Times of London, citing a CIA briefing to congressional intelligence committees, reported that Red China was advising Algeria on how to fit a warhead to a missile delivery system.
It has also been reported that Red China is helping to arm Pakistan. During the Senate debate about extending Red China's most-favored-nation trade status (see "Asia" section), congressional opposition to the extension had been based in part on Red China's alleged role in helping Pakistan, Algeria, and Iran develop nuclear arms. On October 30th, the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs held a closed-door briefing on the issue with intelligence and State Department officials. Ultra-liberal Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) told reporters afterward that he was convinced that the Bush Administration had known of the Red Chinese-Iranian nuclear ties and had hidden the knowledge from Congress to help assure approval of the MFN extension legislation.
Saddam Through In '92?
In January of this year, it was revealed that Saudi Arabia has been pressuring the Bush Administration to organize a sizable covert action campaign to divide the Iraqi army and topple Saddam Hussein. Saddam's days at the Iraqi helm may indeed be numbered. It is, after all, an election year in the United States, and (as reported by the New York Times) the "White House remains deeply concerned that the Iraqi leader is still in power at the outset of a presidential election year in which his survival has become a political issue. The ouster of Saddam before November's election would remove the shadow that the Iraqi leader casts over Bush's campaign and eliminate the possibility that Saddam could do harm to Bush's re-election effort through provocative statements emanating from Baghdad." And more than mere "provocative statements" would be the prospect of a major election-eve assault on the Kurds, or some other military venture, that could undermine the President's re-election bid.
Some analysts speculate that arrangements may be made for Saddam to go into permanent exile, a move that would conveniently solve President Bush's political problem while permitting the Iraqi despot to live out his life in style. It is an interesting possibility, and it will be recalled that President Bush told reporters on April 16, 1991 that he might favor a deal that would assure Saddam "a happy life forevermore" in exile, in return for guarantees that the Iraqi president would never return to Iraq. "We want him out of there so badly and I think it's so important to the tranquility of ... Iraq that, under that condition, we might" make such a deal, the President said.
Forever And Ever
Prior to the war, the U.S. had a limited military presence in the region. Despite assurances that U.S. troops would return home once the conflict was over, it is now apparent that plans were afoot from the start to establish a permanent U.S. military beachhead in the area. As late as mid-April, Bush Administration officials were expressing the hope (but carefully declined to guarantee) that the U.S. military presence would not extend for months or years. Meanwhile, negotiations were in the works to assure that the U.S. presence would indeed be permanent.
On May 9th, following four days of talks with officials representing nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates), Secretary of Defense Cheney told reporters that he had reached a "broad agreement" on the storage of U.S. military equipment in the region, and on joint training exercises that would rotate U.S. troops into the area on a regular basis. Arrangements were to be worked out with each individual country.
On June 13th, Defense Department officials announced that the U.S. was keeping a squadron of F-117A stealth fighters in Saudi Arabia and intended to send fresh fighter-bomber units to the Gulf region as part of an "open-ended" security arrangement. And on September 4th, the U.S. initialed the first pact resulting from the May agreement with the GCC, a ten-year security arrangement allowing U.S. armed forces to stockpile equipment and conduct military exercises in Kuwait. A Defense Department spokesman claimed that the pact did not "in any way open the door for permanent [U.S.] military bases in Kuwait," but the camel's nose, so to speak, is under the tent.
The Hostage Game
The attempt to reconstruct and enhance the image and influence of the United Nations during 1991 was so all-encompassing that, when the last of the hostages held for years by terrorists in Lebanon were released, the UN was given much of the credit for its role in supposedly "negotiating" their freedom. The last living American captive to be freed (on December 4th) was journalist Terry Waite. The decomposed body of Lieutenant Colonel William R. Higgins, who was kidnapped while serving as a member of a UN "peacekeeping" force in southern Lebanon in 1988 (and hanged by his captors in 1989), was found on a street in Lebanon on the evening of December 21st. A total of 17 Americans were kidnapped from 1984 to 1988. Three were killed or died in captivity, two escaped, and the rest were eventually released.
On January 19, 1992, the Washington Post, basing its information on unidentified "Bush administration officials," reported that "Iran had financed the confinement and upkeep of the American hostages," and had "also paid their captors $1 million to $2 million for each released." Iran's ambassador to the United Nations denied the report, which if true, would make boasting about the UN's influence on the hostage release equivalent to boasting about how an ant shakes a bridge while crossing it with an elephant.
If you wonder how Iran came up with the money to pay for the hostages, consider this possibility. On November 26th the U.S. agreed to pay Iran $278 million in compensation for U.S.-Iranian arms agreements canceled after the 1979 revolution that ousted the pro-Western Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlavi and brought the anti-American Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power. The agreement (covering equipment worth about $9 billion) had been signed with the Shah, but had been canceled following his ouster. U.S. officials denied that the U.S. had agreed to the bizarre settlement in return for the release of the hostages.
And Iran apparently included room-and-board in the hostage deal. On Christmas Eve, Associated Press reported that the "reputed leader [Imad Mughniyeh] of the Shi'ite Muslim extremists who held Westerners hostage in Lebanon has moved to Teheran, apparently for safety, after freeing the last of his captives...." And as early as December 8th, London's Sunday Times had quoted Israeli intelligence sources as saying that 30 to 40 of the kidnappers had fled to Iran for protection and new identities.
And, speaking of terrorists, it was reported on June 7th that Saudi Arabia had permitted the renegade faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization headed by terrorist leader Abu Nidal (a.k.a. Sabry al-Banna) to establish offices in Saudi territory. Saudi Arabia had broken off relations with the main PLO due to PLO chairman Yasir Arafat's outspoken pro-Iraqi stance during the Gulf war. Abu Nidal, who is also linked with Iraq, had the good sense to keep quiet about it during the war.
Related Articles:
1992 - Making of a Monster: How the United States Helped Build Iraq's War Machine
1998 - Arming Saddam - If Saddam Hussein Didn't Exist, We Would Have to Invent Him
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