Saddam
Hussein is one of the world’s great monsters. Nothing would
be more welcome than to have him put on trial, a trial which could
offer Iraqis and the world an honest accounting of his many crimes.
However, as so often happens when a trial is organized by those
who are themselves guilty of serious crimes, truth is not the goal.
Instead the historical record is falsified to make the indicted
monster seem uniquely blameworthy and the ones running the show
above criticism.
We
saw this pattern in the Tokyo trials following World War II, where
the crimes of Japanese officials were documented in gruesome detail
(except for the biological warfare programs, which Washington wanted
to use and except for the involvement of the emperor, who was to
serve U.S. purposes during the occupation), while the crimes of
the victors, such as the horrific fire-bombing raids and the destruction
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were disregarded.
Likewise,
Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega was a thug who certainly belonged
in the dock. But when the U.S. military invaded Panama in violation
of international law and seized him for trial in the United States,
there was no intention that the trial would reveal the long-time
ties between Noriega and the U.S. government, particularly between
Noriega and former CIA director George H. W. Bush.
It
is a matter of principle in Washington that U.S. citizens not be
held to the same international standards as others. Thus, the U.S.
refuses to endorse the International Criminal Court and demands
that its allies give up their right to invoke the jurisdiction of
the court when U.S. citizens are involved. But those of us who care
about justice ought to demand that Hussein be tried before a court
that is in no way subject to U.S. control or manipulation. Only
in that way can the truth come out.
Already,
however, much of the media is falling into line in framing Hussein’s
crimes. For example, the
Washington Post
website offers a
summary of “Events in the Life of Saddam Hussein” from
the Associated Press. But the chronology is seriously incomplete.
Below is that chronology, corrected to include some of the most
serious omissions (the
Washington Post’
s entries are
in italics; facts omitted by AP and the
Post
are in brackets).
A
glance at the life of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein:
-
April 28,
1937—Born in village near desert town of Tikrit, north of
Baghdad.
-
1957—Joins
underground Baath Socialist Party.
-
1958—Arrested
for killing his brother-in-law, a Communist, spends six months
in prison.
-
October 7,
1959—On Baath assassination team that ambushes Iraqi Gen.
Abdel-Karim Kassem in Baghdad, wounding him. Saddam Hussein, wounded
in leg, flees to Syria then Egypt.
[This was not the only
attempt to assassinate Kassem. In April 1960, the CIA approved
using a poisoned handkerchief to kill Kassem. The “handkerchief
was duly dispatched to Kassem, but whether or not it ever reached
him, it certainly did not kill him.” (Thomas Powers,
The
Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA
, New York:
Knopf, 1979.)] -
February
8, 1963—Returns from Egypt after Baath takes part in coup
that overthrows and kills Kassem. Baath ousted by military in
November.
[The coup was backed by the CIA. “As its instrument
the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath
Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential
in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani
Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the CIA in 1962 and
1963 was Saddam Hussein….“According
to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human
rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath.
Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided
by the CIA, the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers
of Iraq’s educated elite—killings in which Saddam Hussein
himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll,
but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors,
teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well
as military and political figures.” (Roger Morris, “A
Tyrant 40 Years in the Making,”
New York Times
, March
14, 2003.)] -
July 17,
1968—Baathists and army officers overthrow regime.
[“Again,
this coup, amid more factional violence, came with CIA backing.
Serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Lyndon
Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960s, I often heard CIA
officers—including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore
Roosevelt and a ranking CIA official for the Near East and Africa
at the time—speak openly about their close relations with
the Iraqi Baathists.” (Morris, ibid.)] -
July 30,
1968—Takes charge of internal security after Baath ousts
erstwhile allies and authority passes to Revolutionary Command
Council under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam’s cousin.
[From 1973-75, the United States, Iran, and Israel supported a
Kurdish insurgency in Iraq. Documents examined by the U.S. House
Select Committee on Intelligence “clearly show that the President,
Dr. Kissinger and the [Shah] hoped that our clients [the Kurds]
would not prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents
simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap [Iraqi]
resources…. This policy was not imparted to our clients, who
were encouraged to continue fighting. Even in the context of covert
action, ours was a cynical enterprise.”Then,
in 1975, the Shah and Saddam Hussein of Iraq signed an agreement
giving Iran territorial concessions in return for Iran’s
closing its border to Kurdish guerrillas. Teheran and Washington
promptly cut off their aid to the Kurds and, while Iraq massacred
the rebels, the United States refused them asylum. Kissinger justified
this U.S. policy in closed testimony: “covert action should
not be confused with missionary work.” (U.S. House of Representatives,
Select Committee on Intelligence, Jan. 19, 1976 [Pike Report]
in
Village Voic
e, Feb. 16, 1976. The Pike Report attributes
the last quote only to a “senior official”; William
Safire,
Safire’s Washington
, New York: Times Books,
1980, identifies the official as Kissinger.)] -
July 16,
1979—Takes over as president from al-Bakr, launches massive
purge of Baath
. [In the late 1970s, Saddam also purged the
Iraqi Communist Party and other oppositionists. (Marion Farouk-Sluglett
and Peter Sluglett,
Iraq Since 1958
, London: I. B. Tauris,
1990.) “We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests
between the United States and Iraq,” declared U.S. National
Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in April 1980. (Quoted in
Barry Rubin, “The United States and Iraq: From Appeasement
to War,” in
Iraq’s Road to War
, ed. Amatzia Baram
and Barry Rubin, New York: St. Martin’s 1993.)] -
Sept. 22,
1980—Sends forces into Iran; war lasts eight years.
[When
Iraq invaded Iran, the United Nations Security Council waited
four days before holding a meeting. On September 28, it passed
Resolution 479 calling for an end to the fighting, but which significantly
did not condemn (or even mention) the Iraqi aggression and did
not demand a return to internationally recognized boundaries.
As Ralph King, who has studied the UN response in detail, concluded,
“The Council more or less deliberately ignored Iraq’s
actions in September 1980.” The U.S. delegate noted that
Iran, which had violated Security Council resolutions on the U.S.
embassy hostages, could hardly complain about the Council’s
lackluster response. (R.P.H. King, “The United Nations and
the IranIraq War, 1980-1986,” in
The United Nations and
the Iran-Iraq War
, ed. Brian Urquhart and Gary Sick, New
York: Ford Foundation, August 1987.)Despite
the fact that Iraq had been the aggressor in this war and that
Iraq was the first to use chemical weapons, the first to launch
air attacks on cities, and the initiator of the tanker war, the
United States tilted toward Iraq. The U.S. removed Iraq from its
list of terrorist states in 1982, sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad
as Reagan’s envoy to meet with Saddam Hussein in 1983 and
1984 to discuss economic cooperation, re-established diplomatic
relations in November 1984, made available extensive loans and
subsidies, provided intelligence information, encouraged its allies
to arm Iraq, and engaged in military actions in the Persian Gulf
against Iran. The United States also provided dual-use equipment
that it knew Iraq was using for military purposes. (Joyce Battle,
ed., “Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward
Iraq, 1980-1984,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing
Book No. 82, Feb. 25, 2003, www.gwu.edu/ ~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/.)] -
March 28,
1988—Uses chemical weapons against Kurdish town of Halabja,
killing estimated 5,000 civilians
.[From Iraq’s first
use of chemical weapons in 1983, the U.S. took a very restrained
view. When the evidence of Iraqi use of these weapons could no
longer be denied, the U.S. issued a mild condemnation, but made
clear that this would have no effect on commercial or diplomatic
relations between the United States and Iraq. Iran asked the Security
Council to condemn Iraq’s chemical weapons use, but the U.S.
delegate to the UN was instructed to try to prevent a resolution
from coming to a vote or else to abstain. An Iraqi official told
the U.S. that Iraq strongly preferred a Security Council presidential
statement to a resolution and did not want any specific country
identified as responsible for chemical weapons use. On March 30,
1984, the Security Council issued a presidential statement condemning
the use of chemical weapons, without naming Iraq as the offending
party. (Battle, ibid.)At
the same time that the U.S. government had knowledge of that the
Iraqi military was using chemical weapons, it was providing intelligence
and planning assistance to the Iraqi armed forces. (Patrick Tyler,
“Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq In War Despite Use Of Gas,”
New York Times
, Aug. 18, 2002.)When
Iraq used chemical weapons in March 1988 against Halabja, there
was no condemnation from Washington. (Dilip Hiro, “When U.S.
turned a blind eye to poison gas,” the
Observer
, September
1, 2002.) “In September 1988, the House of Representatives
voted 388 to 16 in favor of economic sanctions against Iraq, but
the White House succeeded in having the Senate water down the
proposal. In exchange for Export-Import Bank credits, Iraq merely
had to promise not to use chemical weapons again, with agricultural
credits exempted even from this limited requirement.” (Rubin,
ibid.)] -
Aug. 2, 1990—Invades
Kuwait.
[The chronology omits one of Saddam Hussein’s
most egregious atrocities, his Anfal campaign against the Kurds
from 1987-89, in which at least 50,000 and possibly 100,000 Kurds
were systematically slaughtered. (Middle East Watch, Genocide
in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds, New York: Human
Rights Watch, 1993.)The
response of the new Bush administration was to increase Iraq’s
commodity credits from half a billion to a billion dollars, making
it the second largest user of the credit program in the world.
As late as April 1990, the administration was opposing sanctions
against Iraq—“They would hurt U.S. exporters and worsen
our trade deficit,” said the State Department. (Guy Gugliotta,
Charles R. Babcock, and Benjamin Weiser, “At War, Iraq Courted
U.S. Into Economic Embrace,”
Washington Post
, Sept.
16, 1990.) The administration also blocked efforts to cut back
high-tech exports to Iraq with obvious military applications.
(Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas, “Bush insisted on aiding
Iraq until war’s onset,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, Feb.
23, 1992.) And the United States provided intelligence data to
Iraq until three months before the invasion. (Murray Waas, Douglas
Frantz, “U.S. shared intelligence with Iraq until 3 months
before invasion of Kuwait,”
Houston Chronicle
, March
10, 1992.)] -
Jan. 17,
1991—Attacked by U.S.-led coalition; Kuwait liberated in
a month.
[As part of the U.S.-led attack, the civilian infrastructure
of Iraq was intentionally targeted (Barton Gellman, “Allied
Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq; Officials Acknowledge Strategy
Went Beyond Purely Military Targets,”
Washington Post
,
23 June 1991; Thomas J. Nagy, “The Secret Behind the Sanctions,”
Progressive
, Sept. 2001), which together with more than
a decade of economic sanctions would lead to hundreds of thousands
of excess deaths. (See Richard Garfield, “Morbidity and Mortality
Among Iraqi Children From 1990 through 1998: Assessing the Impact
of the Gulf War and Economic Sanctions,” March 1999, www.fourthfreedom.org/php/t-si-index.php?hinc=garf-inde
x.hinc.)] -
March, 1991—Crushes
Shiite revolt in south and Kurd revolt in north.
[After urging
Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein, the U.S. denied the
rebels access to captured Iraqi weapons and allowed Saddam Hussein
to use his helicopters to slaughter the insurgents as U.S. aircraft
circled overhead. (Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn,
Out
of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein
, New York:
Harperperennial. 1999.)] -
April 17,
1991—Complying with U.N. Resolution 687, starts providing
information on weapons of mass destruction, but accused of cheating.
-
Feb. 20,
1996—Orders killing of two sons-in-law who in 1995 defected
to Jordan and had just returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees
of safety.
-
Dec. 16,
1998—Weapons inspectors withdrawn from Iraq. Hours later,
four days of U.S.-British air and missile strikes begin as punishment
for lack of cooperation.
[The bombing was conducted without
Security Council approval and without consultations with allies.
The withdrawal of the inspectors was ordered by Richard Butler,
the head of UNSCOM. “France was also annoyed with Washington
for getting Mr. Butler to pull out his inspectors from Iraq without
discussion with the Security Council.” U.S. Secretary of
State “Albright did not speak with Secretary General Kofi
Annan at the United Nations, officials said. Mr. Annan issued
a personal statement, calling this ‘a sad day’ for the
world and ‘me personally,’ because of his failure to
avert the use of force.” (Steven Erlanger, “U.S. Decision
to Act Fast, and Then Search for Support, Angers Some Allies,”
New York Times
, Dec. 17, 1998.)]
-
Nov.
8, 2002—Threatened with “serious consequences”
if he does not disarm in U.N. Security Council resolution.
-
Nov.
27, 2002—Allows UN experts to begin work in Iraq for first
time since 1998.
-
Dec.
7, 2002—Delivers to United Nations declaration denying Iraq
has weapons of mass destruction; later, United States says declaration
is untruthful and United Nations says it is incomplete
. -
March
1, 2003—United Arab Emirates, at an Arab League summit, becomes
first Arab nation to propose publicly that Saddam step down.
-
March
7—United States, Britain, and Spain propose ordering Saddam
to give up banned weapons by March 17 or face war; other nations
led by France on polarized U.N. Security Council oppose any new
resolution that would authorize military action.
-
March
17—United States, Britain and Spain declare time for diplomacy
over, withdraw proposed resolution. President Bush gives Saddam
48 hours to leave Iraq.
[Actually, U.S. officials made clear
that U.S. troops would enter Iraq whether or not Saddam and his
sons left the country. (Michael R. Gordon, “Allies Will Move
In, Even if Saddam Hussein Moves Out,”
New York Times
,
March 18, 2003.)] -
March
18—Iraq’s leadership rejects Bush’s ultimatum.
[“On the eve of war, Iraq publicly offered unlimited access
for American and British weapons hunters.” (David Rennie,
“Saddam ‘offered Bush a huge oil deal to avert war’,”
Daily Telegraph ,
Nov. 7, 2003.) And privately Iraq went
well beyond this. In several
back-channel contacts with
U.S. officials, Iraq offered the U.S. “direct U.S. involvement
on the ground in disarming Iraq,” oil concessions, the turn-over
of a wanted terrorist, cooperation on the Israeli-Palestinian
peace-process, and even internationally-supervised elections within
two years. (James Risen, “Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach
Last-Minute Deal to Avert War,”
New York Times
, Nov.
6, 2003.)One
doesn’t know where these offers may have led, since they
were rejected by the U.S.: “A U.S. intelligence source insisted
that the decision not to negotiate came from the White House,
which was demanding complete surrender. According to an Arab source,
a U.S. intermediary sent a Saudi official a set of requirements
he believed Iraq would have to fulfill. Those demands included
Saddam’s abdication and departure, first to a U.S. military
base for interrogation and then into supervised exile, a surrender
of Iraqi troops, and the admission that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction. (Julian Borger, Brian Whitaker, and Vikram Dodd “Saddam’s
desperate offers to stave off war,”
Guardian
, Nov.
7, 2003.)] -
March
20—U.S. forces open war with military strike on Dora Farms,
a target south of Baghdad where Saddam and his sons are said to
be. Saddam appears on Iraqi television later in the day.
-
April
4—Iraqi television shows video of Saddam walking a Baghdad
street.
-
April
7—U.S. warplanes bomb a section of the Mansour district in
Baghdad where Saddam and his sons were said to be meeting
. -
April
9—Jubilant crowds greet U.S. troops in Baghdad, go on looting
rampages, topple 40-foot statue of Saddam.
-
July
22—Saddam’s sons, Qusai and Odai, killed in gunbattle
with U.S. troops. American forces then raid the northern city
of Mosul and later say they missed Saddam “by a matter of
hours.”
-
July
27—U.S. troops raid three farms in Tikrit. Again, officials
later say they missed Saddam by 24 hours.
-
July
31—Two of Saddam’s daughters, Raghad and Rana, and their
nine children are given asylum by Jordan’s King Abdullah
II.
[That they would need asylum follows from the U.S. policy
of detaining family members of those they are seeking, in violation
of elementary standards of justice. (“The arrest of close
relatives of fugitive regime members has been used by U.S. forces
in the past both as a way to gather intelligence—through
interrogation—and to put emotional pressure on the hunted
men to surrender.” Colin Nickerson, “U.S. Troops Detain
Wife, Daughter Of Key Hussein Aide Ex-Deputy Suspected Of Plotting
Attacks In Iraqi Insurgency,”
Boston Globe
, Nov. 27,
2003.)] -
Sept.
5—Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno of the 4th Infantry Division says
his troops have captured several of Saddam’s former bodyguards
in the Tikrit area in the past month and may be closing in on
the deposed Iraqi dictator.
-
Nov.
16—The last of nine tapes attributed to Saddam Hussein since
he was removed from power is released. It tells Iraqis to step
up their resistance to the U.S.-led occupation, saying the United
States and its allies misjudged the difficulty of occupying Iraq.
[It didn’t take a genius to note that “the United States
and its allies misjudged the difficulty of occupying Iraq.”] -
Dec.
13—Saddam is captured at 8:30 PM in the town of Adwar, 10
miles south of Tikrit. He is hiding in a specially prepared “spider
hole.”
Steve
Shalom teaches political science at William Paterson University in
New Jersey, is a regular contributor to ZNet, and is the author of
several books, including the 2002 textbook called
Which
Side are You On? An Introduction to Politics
.