Like a distant historical footnote to the bloody tragedy raging in Iraq, the trial of Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Chemical Ali, and 14 other former lieutenants of Saddam, began this week. The prosecutor accused them of perpetrating “ among the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history.”

In a just world, George H.W. Bush and James Baker would also be in the dock.

Chemical Ali and his cohorts are being charged with the slaughter of tens of thousands of Shiites following the failed uprising of 1991. It is the third trial before the Iraqi Special Tribunal for crimes against humanity committed during Saddam’s reign.

But, from the beginning, the Tribunal has been a uniquely Kafkaesque affair: first because of the total disconnect between the drama being played out in the court room and the slaughter going on outside the heavily fortified Green Zone. Secondly, by the fact that the horrific history of the 1991 repression is being recounted as if it occurred in an international vacuum. No mention whatsoever of the complicity of the United States and President George H.W. Bush in those bloody events,

Though the British Press has made some mention of America’s role, as far as I can make out, the major American media –and that includes the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, CNN and the Associated Press— have not made even the faintest allusion to the U.S. involvement.

As they tell it, closely following the script being enacted in the court room, it was all the fault of the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein and his beastly lieutenants.

There is no mention in the U.S media of the fact that it was President George H.W. Bush who, in February 2001, as the Iraqi army was being driven from Kuwait, called on the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

That call was rebroadcast in Iraq by clandestine CIA radio stations and printed in millions... [Read More]

The key issue the candidates should be discussing about Iraq is not the way they voted in 2002 , nor whether the U.S. “surge” of  38,000 U.S. troops should continue after September. All this talk is just shadow play—missing (I would say, purposely) the heart of the matter.

Over the past week, spokesmen for the Bush White House have made it clear that the administration is planning a major American presence in Iraq not for months or years but for decades. While the U.S. may withdraw “combat troops” in the near future, there is no way they will not be leaving tens of thousands of other American troops in sprawling city-sized bases already built across that country.

Whether those forces are labeled “combat”, “American freedom providers” or whatever other cosmetic term the White House dreams up, those bases, and the tens of thousands of troops populating them, will be an endless flashpoint for Iraqi nationalists and recruiting poster for Muslim jihadists around the globe. 

Al Qaeda and its hundreds of spin-offs could wish for nothing more.

What’s behind the Bush plans? The same motives that drove the British to create Iraq after World War I: access to the country’s vast petroleum wealth and military bases to protect that access, as well as leaving no doubt—to friends and enemies alike–about who sits astride one of the most important geo strategic parts of the globe.

But how much sense does such reasoning make?

The Bush administration makes its case by comparing Iraq and South Korea—a comparison that, in this day and age, makes no sense whatsoever. Who is North Korea? Iran? For all Iran’s current talk of becoming a nuclear power, what experts seriously believe that Iran’s leaders would consider invading Iraq?  Unlike the U.... [Read More]

Officials in West Virginia are taking heavy flak for their failure to act on early warnings that South Korean Seung-Hui Cho, who massacred 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech, was a seriously disturbed menace to his community 

How then to judge the United States Congress which continues to ignore overwhelming evidence that George W. Bush is an infinitely greater threat to his countrymen; indeed to the entire globe.

Wait, you say, how can you compare the august President of the United States with a dangerously deranged 23 year old South Korean?

You can if you consider the relative menace that each of them poses. Acting by himself, and armed with only a couple of pistols, Seung-Hui Cho managed to kill 32 people. Dubya, on the other hand, commands the most fearful military apparatus the globe has ever known—not to mention a vast intelligence network with thousands of specialized agents ready to do his clandestine bidding in any corner of the globe, from Iran to Somalia to Malaysia.

Why are we so repelled by the video taped rantings of the young South Korean psychopath, yet not equally shocked by the day to day outpourings of the American President?   Could it be we have grown so inured to Dubya’s bizarre view of the world that it no longer shocks. 

Dubya and his clique have been responsible for the illegal invasion of Iraq and the deaths of  hundreds of thousands of its people, most of whom—as the President said of Seung-Hui Cho’s victims—“just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” 

This is not to ignore the continued blood-letting in Afghanistan and the current carnage in the secretive pocket “war against terrorism” being waged with U.S. backing in Somalia. 

In Am... [Read More]

Now let’s see if we’ve got this right:

As negotiations over the 15 captured Brits continue an Iranian diplomat, who had been kidnapped in Iraq a couple of months ago, is suddenly freed and returned to his embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday.

That diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary at Iran’s mission in Baghdad, is still not sure who kidnapped him. He was snatched off the street on February 4th, in broad day light in a predominately Shiite, middle class neighborhood of Baghdad.

The police managed to capture one of the cars involved. The four uniformed men inside claimed they worked for one of Iraq’s many security forces. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari that particular force–and all the other ones contacted–denied the men worked for them. So, of course, did the U.S, military and intelligence agencies.

Although the release of the detainee seemed to coincide with a thaw in negotiations with Iran, Iraq’s Foreign Minister claimed there was no link at all: “Really, it has no connection whatsoever.”

(Question: If Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari doesn’t know who held the kidnapped diplomat, how does he know Shafari’s release has nothing to do with the fate of the 15 Brits? Can’t have it both ways.)

Though Iraqi authorities continue to hold the four kidnappers arrested, they still claim they don’t know for sure who seized the diplomat.

But it’s not necessary to dispatch the four to Egypt or a secret American prison for water boarding. According to the Times, “others familiar with the case said they believed that those responsible worked for the Iraqi Intelligence Servic... [Read More]

The most mammoth is the sprawling air base and logistics centre at Balad, north of Baghdad. As of last year, the U.S. had already poured close to a quarter of a billion dollars into that facility, and was planning tens of millions more, including a major road system and a 13-foot-high security fence that would stretch for 12.4 miles. In fact, thousands of troops stationed at Balad already spend their entire tour of duty within the base’s huge confines.

Balad was billed as Americas’ strategic air center for the entire region. Indeed, one original but unstated objective of the 2003 invasion was to make Iraq the U.S.’s new military platform in that part of the world. The huge U.S. troop presence in Saudi Arabia was becoming much too politically sensitive.

Another facility is the massive marine base of Al-Asad in Anbar province, where a visiting reporter was recently assured by U.S. soldiers that American troops would be rotating though for at least the next decade.

In other words, while American troop levels may be reduced at some point, tens of thousands American troops will almost certainly be remaining behind for years, hunkered down in their rambling new bases. 

Ironically, after World War I, when the British established Iraq they also needed military bases, not just to dominate the immediate region but to help maintain their sway over Persia and India. The British were also determined to control Iraq’s potentially vast petroleum resources.

Eight five years later, in 2007, Iraqis can be forgiven if they think their country has come full circle. In fact, both Sunnis and Shiites are deeply suspicious of U.S. intentions.

It will become an ever more explosive issue. There is no way that the bases and the tens of thousands of troops that man them will not be targeted by anti-American forces of all strip... [Read More]

 A documentary I reported, along with French jounralist Michel Despratx, for Canal + in France, has been broadcast in much of the world, but never in the United States. It  details Western--and particularly U.S.-- complicity with the crimes of Saddam Hussein--such as his use of chemical weapons first against Iranian troops, then against his own Iraqi Kurds.

Back then, of course, the U.S. was backing Saddam, their de facto ally, against Khomeini. "Chemical Complicity," Take a look.

 After viewing, return to this post to see part two.

Part Two:In the late 1980's Saddam also used chemical weapons as part of his genocidal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds..for which he and his confederates have been put on trial--Saddam, of course, no longer in the dock. His de facto American allies turned their back on those crimes. HALABJA. 

My book, Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush, will be available in book stores in the U.S. and Canada this month. Also available at Amazon and other major on-line dealers.

Broadcasters interested in inquiring about the full 54 minute documentary, "The Trial of Saddam Hussein We'll Never See"  here.