History of complicity

Did the first President Bush, in 1991, and President Reagan, in the late '80s, cynically choose to ignore Saddam's use of chemical weapons against Iraqis?

By Barry Lando

Nov 19, 2004 | As the dust settles over the ruins of Fallujah, U.S. officials are estimating that some 1,200 insurgents were killed in the recent assault. How on earth do they know? Since they refused to allow men and boys of military age to leave the city, how can they tell which shattered corpse is which? Even more delusional, Lt. Gen. John Sattler of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force recently told CNN that he knew of not a single Iraqi civilian killed in the devastating attack on Fallujah. So the United States is suddenly interested again in counting bodies in Iraq?

When the Bush administration sought to justify its invasion of Iraq, it shone a spotlight on the number of Iraqis murdered by Saddam Hussein. But since April 2003, when the United States took charge in Baghdad, statistics on Iraqi casualties -- civilian and military -- have no longer been considered important. As Gen. Tommy Franks remarked after the invasion, "We don't do body counts."

More than a decade earlier, the United States performed the same sleight of hand -- now we condemn civilian casualties, now we don't -- with regard to Saddam's actions in the aftermath of the Gulf War, even when it involved Saddam's use of weapons of mass destruction. There is strong evidence that the administration of George H.W. Bush covered up the Iraqi dictator's use of chemical weapons to put down a Shiite uprising in 1991. That uprising, and its ruthless repression, which the current Bush administration prefers not to acknowledge, set the stage for the current turmoil in Iraq.

One of the greatest concerns of coalition forces during Desert Storm was that Saddam would unleash his WMD. U.S. officials repeatedly warned that America's response would be immediate and devastating. Facing such threats, Saddam kept his weapons holstered, or so we were led to believe. In fact, Saddam did use them, not against coalition forces but against his own people, the Iraqi Shiites, who rose up in the wake of Desert Storm. The Shiites had good reason to believe the United States would support their revolt because they had been encouraged to rise up in the first place by President George H.W. Bush. But what was the reaction of Bush I's White House to Saddam's attack on the Shiites? Apparently, there was none.

Confirmation of that attack is contained in the recent report of the Iraq Survey Group, which investigated Saddam's WMD and discovered that he no longer had any at the time of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Because the subject of Saddam's earlier use was not the focus of the report, this information has gone almost universally unnoticed by the media. (A notable exception is Juan Cole in his Oct. 7 "WMD Myth Meant to Deter Iran.")

Charles Duelfer, who headed the ISG team, wrote in its report that the rapid spread of the Shiite uprising in March 1991 panicked Saddam and other government officials. "According to a former senior member of the [chemical weapons] program," says Duelfer, "the regime was shaking and wanted something 'very quick and effective' to put down the revolt."

According to the report, the Iraqis at first considered using mustard gas but decided against it because "of its detectable persistence," fearing that the Americans would discover it. Instead, on March 7, the Iraqi military filled R-400 aerial bombs with sarin, a binary nerve agent. "Dozens of sorties were flown against Shi'a rebels in Karbala and the surrounding areas," the ISG report said. But apparently the R-400 bombs were not very effective, having been designed for high-speed delivery from planes, not slow-moving helicopters. So the Iraqi military switched to dropping CS, a very potent tear gas, in large aerial bombs.

According to Duelfer's report, Saddam and his generals knew they were taking a serious risk. "That the regime would consider this option with coalition forces still operating within Iraq's boundaries demonstrates both the dire nature of the situation and the Regime's faith in 'special weapons.'"

The lingering question, then, is why there was no reaction from members of the U.S. coalition to Saddam's use of chemical weapons. It's virtually impossible to believe they didn't know about it at the time. While preparing a documentary with me on the coming trial of Saddam for French TV's Canal Plus, French journalist Michel Despratx heard repeated charges from Shiite survivors of the uprising that the Iraqi dictator helped crush the rebellion with chemical weapons. They have been making such accusations for years.

What we learned from these Shiites was corroborated by Rocky Gonzalez, a veteran of the U.S. Special Forces whom we interviewed several months before Duelfer's ISG report was issued. In March 1991, Gonzalez, a warrant officer, was acting as an Arabic interpreter with the 101st Division stationed in southern Iraq near an-Najaf and Karbala, two key centers of the uprising. He told us that "people started showing up at our perimeter with chemical burns, burns on their face, on their hands, on places where their skin was exposed. They were coming to us in streams. They said they'd been attacked by chemical weapons."

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