http://www.supplysideinvestor.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=2153
100,000 Men and Boys, Machine-Gunned
to Death!!
Memo To: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Holy Cow!!!That's Genocide!!!
Did you happen to read the letter in
the NYTimes
Tuesday about how Saddam Hussein in 1988 had "100,000 Kurdish men and
boys rounded up, trucked to remote areas and machine-gunned to death, their
bodies bulldozed into mass graves."? The reason I ask you of all people,
Senator, is that I read in the Washington
Post that you are eager
to pre-emptively strike Iraq to deal with this monster, as soon as you
have collected enough of a case against him. I had wondered if you put
the Times letter from Human Rights Watch into your Evidence Envelope,
as it certainly would persuade me we should kill as many Iraqis as it would
take, with bombs and bullets, to rid the Middle East of his ugly presence.
You know from my previous contacts with you and your capable staff that
I consider you to be among the very best U.S. Senators, in the top ten
if not the top five. So if these 100,000 machine-gunned men and boys are
weighing on your decision, I think you can relax on that account.
The story is pure bunk. I've looked into
it and can tell you it never happened. The story actually began as a rumor
picked up by two staff members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
who were in Kurdistan at the time the Iran/Iraq war ended in August 1988.
They reported hearing that 100,000 Iraqi Kurds were GASSED to death by
Saddam's army in a matter of days, soon after he concluded his peace with
Iran. The story was dopey to begin with as most of the Iraqi Kurds of fighting
age had fought side-by-side with the Iraqi army. There were a small number
of Iraqi rebels among the Kurds, who defected to the Iranians expecting
Iran would win the war. Of the 2 million male Kurds in Iraq, more than
half were too young or too old to be rounded up and machine-gunned, so
we are talking about Saddam bumping off more than 10% of the relevant population
in a matter of days. The rumor would not have gone very far, Senator, but
Secretary of State George Shultz held a press
conference and told the world that Saddam had GASSED 100,000 men and
boys of fighting age. When asked how he knew, he said it was a secret!
Our State Department essentially confirmed the stupid rumor without an
investigation.
In the years since, Human Rights Watch
has conceded all those fellas could not have been killed by gas, which
the Army War College tells me has a kill rate of only 2% unless your head
is in the oven. Having raised so much money, the Human Rights Watch folks
had to come up with another theory, which is how they now happen to have
been rounded up, machine-gunned to death, and bulldozed into mass graves.
Fourteen years ago. The folks at the Army War College (who you should talk
to, by the way) tell me only one "mass grave" was found, with 14 corpses,
and there has been no other sign of the rest of the 100,000 bullet-riddled
bodies. The reason Human Rights Watch say they were "trucked to remote
areas" before being bulldozed into mass graves, one might suppose, is that
modern technology can spot such doings by satellite, and no such disturbances
of the land have been located.
They REALLY must be remote because American
newshounds sniffing around right after all this blood was supposed to have
been spilled did not smell a thing. Milton
Viorst of the Washington Post, who knows Kurdistan as well as
any American journalist, rushed to the spot as soon as George Shultz loosed
that bolt from the blue, and reported to his readers:
>From what I saw, I would conclude that
if lethal gas was used, it was not used genocidally -- that is, for mass
killing. The Kurds compose a fifth of the Iraqi population, and they are
a tightly knit community. If there had been large-scale killing, it is
likely they would know and tell the world.
But neither I nor any Westerner I encountered
heard such allegations. Nor did Kurdish society show discernible signs
of tension. The northern cities, where the men wear Kurdish turbans and
baggy pants, were as bustling as I had ever seen them. I talked to armed
Kurds near the border, members of Iraqi military unites mobilized against
the rebels.
On the other hand, Iraq probably used
gas of some kind in air attacks on rebel positions. Journalists visiting
the Turkish camps saw refugees with blistered skin and irritated eyes,
symptoms of gassing. But doctors sent by France, the United Nations and
the Red Cross have said these symptoms could have been produced by a powerful,
but nonlethal tear gas.
Citing national security, Mr. Shultz has
declined to submit the U.S. data to scrutiny, even by America's NATO allies,
though State Department sources say it is the sort of information that
the United States routinely shares with them. American officials acknowledge
that Mr. Shultz's evidence, chiefly radio intercepts, may be subject to
conflicting interpretations.
Do you see what I mean, Senator Hutchison?
Doesn't it look pretty fishy? Especially when we were backing Iraq in its
war with Iran? We should have been celebrating Iraq's victory �
as the Iraqi Kurds in their baggy pants seem to be doing when Milton Viorst
went among them looking for angst. Do you know some people suspect that
Israel had something to do with Shultz coming up with his blast against
Baghdad? Remember Israel had backed Iran in the eight-year war, one of
its major arms suppliers. It was certainly surprised that Iraq won. Maybe
it decided it had better do something about it. You might call it "pre-emptive
propaganda."
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