Did I just learn that Saddam do NOT kill all those Kurds according to the senate intelligence

committee? That is the last hold out that right wingers say that "justifies" the war in Iraq.


Letterman: Let me ask you a question — was there more heinous, more dangerous violence taking place before in Iraq, or is there more heinous, dangerous violence taking place now in Iraq?

O'Reilly: Oh, stop it. Saddam Hussein slaughtered 300,000 to 400,000 people, all right, so knock it off… It isn't so black and white, Dave — it isn't, 'We're a bad country. Bush is an evil liar.' That's not true.

Letterman: I didn't say he was an evil liar. You're putting words in my mouth, just the way you put artificial facts in your head!

Dave concedes at the end that he has "no idea what he's talking about", but added that neither does Bill. It seems Dave was on to something. A fact check of Bill's assertion that Ansar al-Islam worked with the approval of Saddam Hussein's government is wholly unsupported by the Senate Intelligence Committee report (.pdb) released a few moths ago that is the most definitive work to date on the glaring differences between pre-war rhetoric and post-war reality.

(For a breakdown of O'Reilly's disingenuous claim (i.e. lie), read the rest of this story…)

The Senate Intelligence Committee writes on pages 71-72 that Saddam had virtually no control over the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq, that there were flaws that "undermined confidence in the reporting" of such a relationship and that Ansar al-Islam that was not "a branch of al Qaeda." Furthermore, Saddam's regime had no contact with the group other than to possibly infiltrate it to gather intelligence. The report concludes on page 110: "Postwar information reveals that Baghdad viewed Ansar al-Islam as a threat to the regime and that the IIS attempted to collect intelligence on the group."

In other words, not only does Bill grasp at straws to justify the unjustifiable — namely, a working relationship between Saddam Hussein and terrorist groups that legitimized invasion — he mischaracterizes a relationship that is highly dubious at best and completely non-existent at worst to do so. It's amazing that Bush-supporters still try to use these unsubstantiated claims in order to somehow validate the all-out, guns-a-blazing, disastrous war we have waged.

The report also shows that not only did Saddam not have a relationship with al Qaeda, he distrusted them so greatly that he even tried to capture Zarqawi — shattering the Bush administrations most potent conspiracy theory. For anyone who hasn't read the the reports conclusions, they're absolutely shocking in that it conclusively show that all pre-war claims were bogus including Niger yellow-cake, aluminum tubes and Atta-in-Prague the were the "strongest" pieces of evidence indicating a WMD program and Saddam-al-Qaeda link.

Farleft has the full transcript

source saying that it wasn't the Iraqi forces that killed the Kurds during the Anfal campaign. It was pretty much raw data.

There were many other reports saying the opposite.

The final analysis was that Saddam's guys were responsible for the Kurdish deaths.

But if Iraq didn't do it, that's just one more reason that can be used to attack Iran, isn't it?

Link to Farleft, and save people 10 seconds of Googling.

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It is every bit as false as the WMD reports coming out of the current junta/administration.

WRH is also a hate site and shouldn't be cited for anything.

iraqi/kurdish villages. as for saddam, he probably did use gas but there maybe no forensic evidence that he did.

IIRC, a Canadian newspaper report back in 1988-89 that it was unclear if the Iraqi's or the Iranians gassed the village, and that in any case, it may have been a case of "friendly fire" from the Iraqi's.

Think about it -- you have a hostile army in front of you, so why would you waste precious munitions on a bunch on non-combatants.

organizations have established Iraq's guilt beyond any kind of reasonable doubt.

And Halabja was not the only Kurdish village that Saddam gassed.

gassed Kurdish evidence--including forensic evidence.

There is no credible evidence that Iran did.

No offense, but without some source documentation, your opinion isn't credible.

some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_campaign

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack

http://www.phrusa.org/research/chemical_weapons/chemiraqgas2.html
http://www.phrusa.org/research/iraq/news_2006-08-24.html

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/IRAQ913.htm
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/IRAQ913.htm#5


This link debunks the lie that Iran was responsible:

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/dc/briefs/030701.htm

I can't guarantee that I'll read it all, but thanks for the information.

If I had a link to the alternate view, I'd post it, but I've been Googling with no success.

All I remember is that a Canadian newspaper cast some doubts as to whether the Iraqi Army was responsible. In particular it noted that the agent used in the attack was one more commonly used by the Iranian Army (they were both gassing each other fairly regularly). But as I said, I can't find the article any more.

from http://foi.missouri.edu/polinfoprop/warcrime.html

Al Qaeda relationship; of course this was a lie used by Bushco. If the truth whether Saddam was responsible for the gassed Kurds is ever revealed and it proved that Saddam was not responsible, it would be just another lie spouted by the Bush administration.

I've never heard of "Farleft".

If Junior and his presstitutes are flogging it, you can be sure it's trumped-up bullshit.