The Neo-Conned And
Neo-Conned AgainBy Ibrahim Ebeid
27 February, 2006
Countercurrents.orgI was honored to receive Neo-Conned and Neo-Conned Again. The two Volumes are an excellent collection of articles, essays and interviews written by respected authors from different religions, nationalities and backgrounds. Light in the Darkness Publishers must be proud of this great effort in beaming their light in the darkness to help us see the facts behind the illegal war and the invasion of Iraq.
It happened that I lived and worked in Iraq a good portion of the seventies and I have witnessed the development of Iraq to occupy the first place in the Middle East. I visited the area several times in the eighties and I have seen more advanced developments. These developments were going on in high gear despite of the war with Iran until George Bush, the father, imposed the genocidal blockade and launched his brutal war in 1991.
The authors brilliantly exposed the neo – conservatives who were behind launching the war on fabricated lies, the raping of Iraq, dismantling it, stealing its wealth for their own interests and for the benefit of "Israel" and their allies.
Frankly, the Neo- Conned volumes are unique and superior to many other books and essays that partially or obscurely deal with the subject. These volumes recognize that the Resistance and the Baath Party and the Iraqi legal Leadership have, according to the International Laws, the right to defend themselves and to defend Iraq against the blatant aggression and illegal occupation, a matter that many Anti War Organizations failed to address.
These volumes will be of a great value for those who are in the Peace and Anti War Movements to help shed the light to some of the confusion that overwhelms some of these organizations.
In The Bogus Case against Saddam An Interview with Jude Wanniski
He says:
What happened during the attack on Halabja? The most authoritative source on this subject is Dr. Stephen Pelletiere, who was the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and was afterwards Professor at the Army War College in Pennsylvania from 1988 to 2000 when he retired. Along with two other people, LTC Douglas V. Johnson and Leif Rosenberger, he headed a 1990 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the U.S.; the result was published in Army War College Strategic Studies Institute publication entitled, "Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East." He says, "I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington.... The classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair."
Let us quote him extensively so that his position is ultra-clear:
This much about the gassings at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try and kill Iranians who had seized the town. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.
The story gets murkier. Immediately after the battle, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which 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 each other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds’ bodies, however, indicates that 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. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker in March 2002 did not make reference to the DIA. report, or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof that it was skewed out of American political favoritism towards Iraq in its war against Iran.
I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein.... But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases when gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be justification for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them.
One interesting point to put into the equation is the fact that when Secretary of State James Baker met the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, in Geneva in 1990, in the run up to the first Gulf War, he told Aziz that he did not believe the story of Iraq gassing the Kurds.
As an activist in the Arab cause since 1954 I recommend these great books for students who are interested in the Arab World, and especially in Iraq and in the unjust war. They would be of great value for Students of International Relations and Humanities and foremost to understand how the minds of the neo cons function in deceiving the American people and the World.This collection is very sophisticated, objective and informative. It might help the Americans to restore dignity to the United States and put it on the path of peace and save it from the Neocons.
Link to Neo-Conned http://www.neoconned.info/
