Pak Tribune, Pakistan
American and Saddam: 'No Honor Among Murderers'

“Had the trial been held under international auspices, the world would have known that America was implicated up to its gills in Saddam's genocide of the Kurds and his war against Iran.”

By Anwaar Hussain*  

January 9, 2006
Pakistan's Pak Tribune - Original Article (English)    

On Saturday December 30th, at 6:05am Iraq time at the Abu Ghraib prison, Saddam Hussein was executed. Not for the mass murders of some 100,000 Kurds, but for killing 148 Iraqis who were allegedly involved in a plot to kill him in 1982 in the small town of Dujail. His soul left behind his corpse dangling at the end of the hangman's rope to join the restless souls of some of his victims, still haunting the murky chambers of this infamous prison.

[Editor's Note: Actually, Saddam was not executed at Abu Ghraib, but at "Camp Justice," an Iraqi army base in a neighborhood in northeast Baghdad. The facility was once Saddam's military intelligence headquarters].

Left behind also were his jubilant executioners … the incumbent U.S. President, the British Prime minister and, to varying degrees, a host of other Western leaders. The poetic irony is that Saddam's executioners were once his bosom buddies.

As many as 100,000 Kurds were killed in 1988. Why then was Saddam tried by a kangaroo court and executed for killing 148 men and boys in the Shiite town of Dujail in 1982? Why was this sham trial pursued by the United States of America with such fervor that The New York Times in its May 21st issue last year observed that;

"The American influence has been undeniably pervasive, with about 90 percent of the $145 million in annual costs for the court and associated investigations paid for by the United States Justice Department, and lawyers sent by Washington acting as advisers ."

Saddam traveled a fateful path between two extremes - America's amorous embrace and the macabre dance at the gallows. The question that needs answering is why would the murderers kill one of their own? His rush to the hangman's noose is therefore worth study.

Here is why he was killed.

Saddam Hussein's execution on Dec. 30 not only prevents him from standing trial for his most serious crimes - genocide against the Kurds and the use of poison gas in the Iran-Iraq War - but more importantly, silences him forever. His accomplices in crime can now breathe easy.

Had the trial been held under international auspices, the world would have known who supplied Saddam Hussein with materials of mass destruction and where his regime, so notorious for atrocities against Iraqis, Iranians and Kurds, acquired weapons, germs and lethal chemicals.

The world would have known that on March 21st, 1986, when the U.N. wanted to show its concern over Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons and U.N. Security Council members were, "profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops ... [and] that the  members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons," that the only country to vote AGAINST the issuance of this statement was the United States of America.

From arranging to supply Iraq with chemicals for poison gas to kill his countrymen to providing Baghdad with satellite and AWAC intelligence on Iranian targets to sending USAF photo interpreters to Baghdad to draw Saddam maps of the Iranian trenches so that he could douse them with poison gas, the world would have known that America was implicated up to its gills in Saddam's genocide of the Kurds and its war against Iran.

The world would have known the long list of Western and U.S. companies that supplied Saddam with deadly and dual-use material. Union Carbide, Honeywell, Dupont, SpectraPhysics and Bechtel are just a few of those on the list.

The world would have known that the Reagan-Bush Administration, in complete violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 that outlawed chemical warfare, had sanctioned the sale of poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, from anthrax to bubonic plague, throughout the '80s. Not only that, in 1982, while Saddam Hussein built up his war machinery, Reagan and Bush removed Iraq from the State Department's list of terrorist states.

The world would have known that when Donald Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein in 1983, signaling a bonding of the U.S.-Iraq military alliance, Iraq was already using chemical weapons on an "almost daily basis." The world would have known that that following that visit, the Pentagon supplied logistical and military support, U.S. banks provided billions of dollars in credits, and the CIA, using a Chilean conduit, increased Saddam's supply of cluster bombs.

The world would have known that only six months after the heinous massacre of the Kurds in March 1988, U.S. companies sent eleven strains of germs and four types of anthrax to Iraq, including a strain of microbe called 11966 developed at Fort Detrick in the 1950s for germ warfare. Judith Miller provides a brief account of this disgusting traffic in U.S. chemicals and germs in her book, "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War Watch ."

The world would have known that as late as 1990, according to a report from U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio), American companies under permit from the first Bush Administration, sent mustard gas materials and live cultures for bacteriological research to Iraq. U.S. companies not only helped Iraq build a chemical weapons factory, they also shipped Saddam West Nile virus, hydrogen cyanide precursors and parts for a new nuclear plant.

The world would have known that Dow Chemical of Agent Orange fame sold large amounts of pesticides and toxins that cause death by asphyxiation; that 24 U.S. firms exported weapons and material to Baghdad and that France sent Saddam 200 AMX medium tanks, Mirage bombers and Gazelle helicopter gunships.

The world would have known that executives of Alcoliac International of Maryland transported mustard gas precursors to Saddam; that Tennessee manufacturers provided sarin-based chemicals; that the heads of Dow Chemical sold him toxins that cause death by asphyxiation; that the heads of Bechtel produced chemicals for Saddam in their Iraqi plant; that CIA agents made covert arms deals and transported cluster bombs to a proven tyrant. The world would have known the names of a whole lot of other international accessories to Saddam Hussein's crimes.

The world would have known that it's not just the buyers but the suppliers of death who are answerable under the Nuremberg Conventions, which say, "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity, is a crime under international law."

Above all, the world would have known that while Saddam Hussein's most ardent opponents accused him of killing 300,000 Iraqis during his 35-year rule, George W. Bush has more than doubled that in less than four years, with the "surge" yet to come.

President George W. Bush finally broke his silence on the unprovoked killings of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in the town of Haditha by muttering he was "troubled by the initial news stories" over six months after the event, two months after he was briefed on the atrocity by his national security adviser and two months after a detailed account appeared in Time Magazine,

The murderer-in-chief, U.S. President George W. Bush, promptly called Saddam's execution, ''the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime.''

How about calling out the hangman again for the justice denied the victims of Haditha?

No honor among murderers ... eh?

Some devilry, some hypocrisy, some sense of justice, some bloody double standards.

*Anwaar Hussain is a former Pakistan Air Force F-16 fighter pilot. With a Masters in Defense and Strategic Studies from Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad, he now resides in United Arab Emirates. He has published a series of articles in Defense Journal, South Asia Tribune and a host of other web portals. Other than international affairs, Anwaar Hussain has written extensively on the religious and political issues that plague Pakistan.

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