• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

Hussein Did Not Gas Kurds!

Billo_Really

Banned
DP Veteran
Joined
Jul 6, 2005
Messages
18,930
Reaction score
1,040
Location
HBCA
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Very Liberal
Many people bring up the issue of Hussein gassing his own people (the Kurds). They use this as one of the main reasons why he needed to be taken out. The links below indicate the gassings were not of his doing. In fact, quite possibly, it was the Iranians.

I think Hussein is an evil piece of $hit. He's garbage in my eyes. Still, this is not justification to violate International Law and attack just to make a regime change.

http://www.phrusa.org/research/chemical_weapons/chemiraqgas2.html

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/helms

http://hnn.us/articles/1242.html

So, stop with the Hussein gassing mantra, its just not true! Unless you care to debate it.
 

Thank you Bill! Finally someone reasonable.
 
Well 1st of all the Kurds arent even "his people"....they arent Iraqi nor are the Arabs...but he did use Gas on the Irainians though...as a matter of fact supposedly the U.S. gave him Gas to counter the Gas that Iran already had..The condition of the dead Kurds' bodiess supposedly indicated they had been killed with a blood agent (cyanide-based gas) ..... which Iran was known to use.The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.......more about Iran's role in this will probably come out as those War Drums beat louder



peace
 
Yes he did, in 1986 he launched his Al-Anfal Campaign, it was designed as an anti-kurdish in nature, it's goal was genocide against the Kurd's. Between 1986-1989 Amnesty International and The Human Rights Watch both estimate that he killed between 180,000-182,000 Kurdish people. In March from the 15th-19th of 1988 a battle raged in Halabja a town 150 miles North East of Baghdad close to the Iranian border. On March 16th and 17th the Iraqi Air Force dropped Mustard Gas, and the Nerve Agents Sarin, Tabun, and VX. As well as a rumored use of Hydrogen Cyanide. The Town was held by Iranian forces and Kurdish Guerillas. The number's of civilian killed are disputed but it ranges from 900-5,000. The Iraqi government admitted the gas had been used but the excess of civilian dead were the result of mishandling of the Combat Gas.


It is an established fact that the Iraqi's did in fact use poisen gas at Halabja, what is contested is the intent, and the amount of dead. Also there is the possiblity that the Iranians countered with an attempt of their own chemical weapons. But from all witness account's and government record's they either failed or never did it.

It is an insult to the people who were horrifically killed by the gas to assume otherwise.
 
Of course not, haven't you heard? Bush and the Jews did.

They're also responsible for that last Tsunami, 9/11, AIDS, Small Pox,...
 

Government records? Amnesty? HRC? HA. All politically motivated. The fact is that NO ONE can say with any semblence of certainty who launched the gas which killed the kurds who wasn't there. 900 and 5,000 are way apart. This is why it's ridiculous to assume that hundreds of thousands died. You weren't there. No one from our government was there. Who knows what happened.
 
The Iraqi's themselves explained that they used gas, and that it was mishandled in the course of combat against the Iranians which lead to civilian death. They made an excuse for the high number of civilian dead ion the chemical attack which they say was designated to drive back the Iranians. There is no logical dispute about whether the Iraqi's used Chemical Weapons at Halabja, they say they did.
 

Actually there is. Saddam said that someone who tried to assasinate him was from a kurdish town. It's possible he found it convienient to take responsibility for the gassing to intimidate the kurds at the time to prevent another assasination attempt.
 
The Iraqi military is known by fact to have used Chemical Weapons to have dislodged the Iranians and Kurd's from Halabja. Both Iran and Iraq acknowledge it. The Iranians lost hundred's of soldiers as well as reputed thousands of Kurdish supporters. Iraq responded in the UN that it was a tragic result of the mishandling of the combat gas which was dispensed from helicopters bought from the Americans, as well as suspected biological artillary shells.
 
Napoleon's Nightingale said:
Actually there is. Saddam said that someone who tried to assasinate him was from a kurdish town. It's possible he found it convienient to take responsibility for the gassing to intimidate the kurds at the time to prevent another assasination attempt.
Click to expand...

The lengths some will go to, following large loops of reason, to insure that noone thinks Saddaam is a bad guy.
 
VTA said:
The lengths some will go to, following large loops of reason, to insure that noone thinks Saddaam is a bad guy.
Click to expand...

Why is it any less plausible than your theory? Because our government told you so? They also said there were Al Qaeda connections and WMDs. Ha. It's not at all a large loop of reason. Why do you insist on condemning a man when all you have seen is a bunch of heresay? Innocent until PROVEN guilty WITHOUT a reasonable doubt.
 
How do you know Bush is the bad guy? Some media pundit tell you so?
No one seems to mind taking at face value the rhetoric slanted to make their point valid, as long as it helps them win an argument.

Don't take my word for it; I'd suggest you dig up Saddaams biography, there are plenty around, and they're not written by the American Government.
 
From your own sources you link Billy:

First link:
Did you think I wasn't going to read them?

Second Link:
This is serious stuff, because the US Army War College tells us that 1.4 million Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the sanctions, which is 3,000 times more than the number of Kurds who supposedly died of gassing at the hands of Saddam.
Click to expand...
Not only is this an opinionated piece, it is also factually incorrect and misguided. The person who wrote this seems to think that it is the US and UN's fault that such harsh sanctions took place after a country had invaded an innocent nation. However, if the $60 Billion + actually made it to the Iraqi people like it should have, it probably would have been a successful operation. But, who's to blame there?

Link three:
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Stephen Pelletiere argued that the March, 1988, gassing of Kurds during the waning months of the Iran-Iraq war may have been perpetrated by Iran, not Iraq.
Click to expand...
And also...

First, let me detail the chemical bombing of Halabja. In this link, the Human Right’s Watch clearly reported that Iraq initiated the attack on the village, even before Iranian troops had entered the area. THERE IS NO WAY YOU WILL CONVINCE ME SADDAM DIDN’T GAS THE KURDS! So stop trying.

Next time you want to prove something, actually read the articles, not just their titles. Nice try to clear Saddam's name though.
 
Last edited:
Maybe you ought to read the whole article instead of just the part you agree with. I was making an effort to show reports from both sides of the aisle. You really don't desire objectivity, do you? You want people to be as biased as you are, don't you? If you would have read the rest of the sources I provided, you would see your take on this is FOS.

The following is to remind you what you didn't read or conveniently disgarded.

The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein.

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.

I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time. These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/helms

Heres another guy with selective reading skills.
After I made this statement:
I think Hussein is an evil piece of $hit. He's garbage in my eyes.
Click to expand...
in this dude comes back with this:
Originally posted by VTA:
The lengths some will go to, following large loops of reason, to insure that noone thinks Saddaam is a bad guy.
Click to expand...
Stay off the Mad Dog[MD20/20], its just too much sugar!
 
The Iraqi Army. Itself. Issued the statement that the end result of excess of civilian deaths was caused by the mishandling of the combat gas. They acknowledge that they did it, and have an explination of why so many people were killed. When the nation your trying to defend says it is guilty, yet you hold on vehimant your normally in a bad spot. Let it go, it's not worth it Billo.
 
lol.... it just gets worse & worse.... you read some left wing crap & that's it?! ANYTHING you post from now on is just left wing crap. You made an ass out of yourself with this thread.
 
tr1414 said:
lol.... it just gets worse & worse.... you read some left wing crap & that's it?! ANYTHING you post from now on is just left wing crap. You made an ass out of yourself with this thread.
Click to expand...
Originally, this was Reaganite spin. Times have changed now that the liberal entryists are in the WH.
 
How laughable! You’re really reaching with this one Billo.

By the way, just thought I’d help you out with the signature again Billo: You misspelled Hermann Goering and he didn’t say that at the Nuremberg trials.

He said that privately to Gustave Gilbert, an intelligence officer and psychologist, who later published the book “Nuremberg Diary” where the quote was originally revealed.

As usual, I know you’ll appreciate the fact that I’m not being critical, just helping you out with a few facts.
 
Originally posted by GPS_Flex:
How laughable! You’re really reaching with this one Billo.
Click to expand...
Why is this so laughable? I provided my sources. Reports were from the intelligence community. They are a matter of public domain. There are many more articles on this subject (if you care to look). But it is easier to be lazy and just dismiss it as outragous. Or is it your too afraid to deal with the alternative? Conveniently, you do not provide any sources to back up your claim.
 
Originally posted by Simon W. Moon:
Originally, this was Reaganite spin. Times have changed now that the liberal entryists are in the WH.
Click to expand...
"...Reaganite spin..." or not, it doesn't prove the assertion is false.
 
Originally posted by tr1414:
lol.... it just gets worse & worse.... you read some left wing crap & that's it?! ANYTHING you post from now on is just left wing crap. You made an ass out of yourself with this thread.
Click to expand...
Unless you have forgotton how to read, I suggest you go down to Big 5 Sporting Goods store, pick yourself up a set of balls, then go to the sources I provided, and read them.
 
Billo Really said:
Conveniently, you do not provide any sources to back up your claim.
Click to expand...
Oh come on Billo, you should know me better than that by now.

I try to do you a favor and you presume me a liar? If you need a link, it might be better to just ask me for one next time rather than make the insinuation that I was somehow trying to mislead you.

Here’s your link Billo:
 
Simon W. Moon said:
Originally, this was Reaganite spin. Times have changed now that the liberal entryists are in the WH.
Click to expand...


and YOUR a mod?! UN freaking REAL
 
Billo Really said:
Why is this so laughable? I provided my sources.
Click to expand...
All but one of your sources do more to confirm that Saddam used chemical weapons on the Kurds than dispute it. The basis of Stephen C. Pelletiere’s argument is that Iraq didn’t posses blood agents and Iran did. He doesn’t contest the fact that chemical weapons were used on the Kurds because he’d be viewed as an idiot if he did. He’s simply making the case that it might have been the Iranians who attacked the Kurds in Halabja based upon his belief that Iraq didn’t have said blood agents at the time.

He fails to account for the fact that the town was supporting Iran and there were Iranian soldiers there and if it were Iran that committed the attack they would be killing their own soldiers and supporters.

He admitted he orrigionally supported the report that it was Iraq that attacked the town but now changes his mind based upon his belief that Iraq didn’t posses a blood agent that was used? How the hell does he know what Iraq had in its arsenal at the time? Looks like an opportunist trying to make a name for himself by throwing out another conspiracy theory if you ask me.

Your thread is laughable because there is no evidence to discount the numerous accounts of witnesses who testified that they saw Iraqi warplanes dropping the chemical agents and it doesn’t erase the numerous other uses of chemical weapons by Iraq on its own people.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/18714.htm

http://www.sciri.btinternet.co.uk/English/Saddam_Crimes/Chemical_Weapons/chemical_weapons.html

http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html

http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…