What did Saddam do?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

A Petition
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

The Venerable Chief and Leader, the Honorable Saddam Hussein (May God Protect Him), President of the Republic and Head of the Honorable Revolutionary Command Council:

Struggling Comrade, I greet you. And I present myself to you as a devoted citizen.

I implore you in the name of Ba'athist Justice to hear my plight, which has deprived me of sleep night and day. For I lost all hope and when I had no one left to turn to except yourselves, I came to you with my problem, which may be of some concern to you.

Sir:

I, the undersigned, Assi Mustafa Ahmad, who returned as a prisoner of war on August 24, 1990, am a reserve soldier born in 1955. I participated in the Glorious Battle of Saddam's Qadissiyat in the Sector of Al-Shoush and was taken prisoner on March 27, 1982. I remained a prisoner until the day that the decision to exchange prisoners of war was issued. Then I returned to the homeland and kissed the soil of the Beloved Motherland and knelt in front of the portrait of our Victorious Leader and President Saddam Hussein. In my heart I felt a tremendous longing to return to my family. They would delight in seeing me, and I would delight in seeing them, and we would all be caught up in an overwhelming joy that could not be described.

However, I found my home completely empty. My wife and my kids were not there. What a catastrophe! What a horror! I was told that the whole family had fallen into the hands of the Anfal forces in the Anfal operation conducted in the Northern Region, under the leadership of Comrade Ali Hassan al-Majid. I know nothing of their fate. They are:

1. Azimah Ali Ahmad, born 1955/ My wife.
2. Jarou Assi Mustafa, born 1979/ My daughter.
3. Faraydoun Assi Mustafa, born 1981/ My son.
4. Rukhoush Assi Mustafa, born 1982/ My son.
I have thus come to you with this petition, hoping that you would take pity on me and inform me of their fate. May God grant you success and protect you. You have my thanks and respect.
[signature]

Former Prisoner of War
Reserve Soldier/Assi Mustafa Ahmad
Without home or shelter in Suleimaniyeh/
Chamchamal/Bekas Quarter/
Haji Ibrahim Mosque October 4, 1990

The reply

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Republic of Iraq
Bureau of the Presidency
Reference No.: Sh Ayn/B/4/16565

Date: October 29, 1990

Mr. Assi Mustafa Ahmad
Suleimaniyah Governorate
Chamchamal District
Bekas Quarter
Haji Ibrahim Mosque

With regard to your petition dated October 4, 1990. Your wife and children were lost during the Anfal Operations that took place in the Northern Region in 1988.

Yours truly,
[signature]
Saadoun Ilwan Muslih
Chief, Bureau of the Presidency

[Ramo]

ramo thats ridiculous we aren't ignoring them. we know they are there.

Uh huh. The government sure could've fooled me.

Like how we've left Afghanistan in the hands of Islamist warlords except for the gov't in Kabul which has virtually no power. That sure is in the interests of liberty of the people and the security of Americans. Nice to see the US on top of things.

this is the typical hypocrisy u find by anti war protestors.
they yell at us for ignoring othe rppl. but would they support us invading them? no.

You are wrong. I would support certain military action by the US. For instance, finishing the job in Afghanistan.

so really all they are practicing is duplicitous arguing tactics to try and make the other side look bad. instead of engaging in any fruitful thot.

No, you're just taking stuff out of context, and making idiotic generalizations about the anti-war movement.

You know, I've never been under any illusions concerning how well-informed Apolytoners are, but some levels of crashing ignorance baffle me.
Want more of these reports? There's loads. The Ba'athist regime is monstrous.

That's not relevant. The alternative isn't going to be any better. Either the US installs another ruthless Sunni dictator, probably a Ba'athist general, who proceedingly crushes the autonomous Kurds, or a massive civil war breaks out in the South between the Sunni Ba'athist elite and the Shia populous dominated by Shia Islamists and backed by Iranian proxies, and there will be multiple invasions of an independent Kurdistan, causing reaction in Iran and Tukey, destabilization in Saudi Arabia, and lots of new recruits for al-Qaeda. Either case, considering the deaths and destruction to infrastructure a US invasion would case, would be decidedly worse than the status quo. Either Shrub understands the situation, and acts on interest of real-politik (which, again, is worse than the present situation), or he doesn't realize what's going on makes the situation much, much worse.

[Dis]

finishing the job in Afghanistan?

There is nothing more we can do. They have won. They know where to hide, we don't.

We can't just declare war on the tribal leaders. Do you realize how much flack we would take from European countries and anti-war protestors? That isn't feasible.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Ramo


That's not relevant. The alternative isn't going to be any better.

That was the reasoning used on Indonesia, Rwanda, Burma, etc....

How many more millions is it going to take? Check your crystal ball for cracks and start thinking about whether we haven't been doing enough to stop regimes like this one.

[notyoueither]

Ramo, you cannot make countries out of whole cloth. Anyone must deal with those who are there. The fact that Afghanistan is a ****ed up place was known at the outset. However, leaving Bin Laden largely in charge was not a good idea.

So too is it known that Iraq is not an easy issue, but leaving Saddam in place does not seem to be an option. The guy doesn't want nukes? He would not do anything to get them? He is not a murderous bastard who starves his own people to pursue weapons programs?

What do you want? No sanctions, no war, and just leave him to his own devices?

[Dis]

and even Clinton supports booting Saddam and removing the weapons of mass destruction.

I can provide a link if you want. He said this recently at the speech on 92nd street.

Of course he says Bush screwed it up diplomatically- but he does support booting Saddam.

[Ramo]

How many more millions is it going to take? Check your crystal ball for cracks and start thinking about whether we haven't been doing enough to stop regimes like this one.

We didn't bring justice and liberty and the American way to Afghanistan. What makes you believe that we will in Iraq, where the domestic and international situation is considerably more complex?

[qutoe]finishing the job in Afghanistan?
There is nothing more we can do. They have won. They know where to hide, we don't. [/quote]

What do you mean there's nothing more we can do? We haven't made the slightest effort.

We can't just declare war on the tribal leaders. Do you realize how much flack we would take from European countries and anti-war protestors? That isn't feasible

Why can't we? We'd probably even have world support instead of world opposition in Afghanistan. As for anti-war protestors, myself and most of the people who oppose war in Iraq that I know wouldn't oppose finishing the job in Afghanistan.

[Dis]

the tribal leaders don't directly support terrorism or have weapons of mass destruction.

But I agree we need to put diplomatic pressure to somehow get some law and order into that country. But I'm not sure how we can do that.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Ramo


We didn't bring justice and liberty and the American way to Afghanistan. What makes you believe that we will in Iraq, where the domestic and international situation is considerably more complex?

Nothing whatsoever, Ramo. I'd just settle for reducing the bodycount so that it's measured in tens of thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands (possibly millions).

[Ramo]

Ramo, you cannot make countries out of whole cloth.

That's what Shrub is planning on doing in Iraq, except that there aren't huge problems posed by neighboring countries.

What do you want? No sanctions, no war, and just leave him to his own devices?

What I want that I can perhaps realistically get are smarter sanctions, dealing directly with the Iraqi people instead of the gov't in Baghdad.

So too is it known that Iraq is not an easy issue, but leaving Saddam in place does not seem to be an option. The guy doesn't want nukes? He would not do anything to get them? He is not a murderous bastard who starves his own people to pursue weapons programs?

His persuit for WMD's is irrelevent. As the Gulf War had shown, he has demonstrated that he will not use them if there isn't international sanction behind their use. The fact that he's a murderous bastard might be relevant if our gov't were more responsible.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Ramo

His persuit for WMD's is irrelevent. As the Gulf War had shown, he has demonstrated that he will not use them if there isn't international sanction behind their use. The fact that he's a murderous bastard might be relevant if our gov't were more responsible.

Goktapa means "green hill" in Turkish--a language whose influence is often apparent still in this former part of the Ottoman Empire's Mosul vilayet. Although the whole village had originally been built on the slopes of the hill, some families had resettled on the flat farmland on the south bank of the Lesser Zab after Goktapa was burned in 1963, during the first Ba'ath regime, after the first of many fierce battles between government forces and the peshmerga. In truth Goktapa was more a small town than a village, with at least 300--some say as many as 500--households, as well as a school, a clinic and two Sunni mosques. The surrounding fields produced rich harvests of cotton, wheat, tobacco, sunflowers, potatoes, eggplant, sweet pepper, beans, okra, grapes, apricots, figs and watermelon. Goktapa even had electricity, although the women still carried water from the river on donkeys.

Goktapa had endured the repression familiar to most villages in the prohibited areas. From a checkpoint outside the nahya of Aghjalar, half an hour away by car on a paved road, the army tried with mixed success to impose a blockade on all foodstuffs reaching the villages on the south side of the Lesser Zab. In 1982 or 1983, after a pitched battle between government forces and peshmerga, Goktapa was savagely attacked by helicopters, aircraft, tanks and ground troops. Among those killed was a 45-year old woman named Miriam Hussein, shot from a helicopter. There had been peshmerga in Goktapa since the far-off days of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, and after 1984 the village housed an important PUK command post. As a result it was bombed frequently. "We spent most of our lives in shelters," said one woman. When asked to describe the attitude of the civilian population towards the peshmerga, Fawzia, a woman of sixty, smiled. "The peshmerga were loved by the people," she said. "No one hates his own people." The peshmerga protected them from the armyand jahsh, she added: "Naturally; if there were no peshmerga, they would kill us with knives, cut out our tongues."6

May 3, 1988 was a lovely spring day. The river valley was carpeted in green and dotted with roses and other flowers. Although it was still Ramadan, and the people were fasting, the women of Goktapa were baking bread, and the children were splashing in the Waters of Dukan. Throughout April, Goktapa had seen a lot of peshmerga coming and going, stopping briefly in the village to eat, bringing news of the rout in Germian and Qara Dagh, spending the night and then moving on. But there had been no fighting in Goktapa itself, and ten days had now passed since the last Kurdish fighters had been sighted.

An hour or so before dusk, the late afternoon stillness was broken by the sound of jet engines. Abd-al-Qader Abdullah Askari, a man in his late 60s, was a little distance from his home when he heard the aircraft. Everyone in this part of Iraqi Kurdistan knew of Abd-al-Qader and his famous family. His late father, Abdullah, had been the head of the Qala Saywka tribe, which owned thirty-six villages in the hills around Aghjalar. By the time he died, the old man's property had dwindled to seven villages, which he divided among his sons. Abd-al-Qader was given Goktapa, although "I always worked with my hands; I never liked to exploit anyone."7 His brother Ali received the nearby village of Askar--hence the name "Askari." In time Ali became a senior PUK commander and a close confidant of Jalal Talabani.

Askar, an hour and a half on foot from Goktapa, seems to have been the aircraft's first target on May 3, no doubt because the PUK's first malband, in retreat from Germian, had tried to set up its new base here. A formation of MIGs swooped low over the village, which was now full of peshmerga. There were eight dull explosions, followed by a column of white smoke that smelled pleasantly of mint. Borne on a southeasterly wind, it drifted as far as Haydar Beg, a couple of miles away. When it cleared, nine villagers of Askar lay dead. Members of the PUK rushedaround administering atropine injections to those who had been exposed to the gas.8

Askar was not visible from Goktapa, and Abd-al-Qader was not especially alarmed when he looked up and saw the aircraft approaching. "I did not pay attention because we suffered from many bombardments. I thought it would be the same as in the past. We did not go into the shelters in front of our houses. No one paid any attention to the planes; we were accustomed to them. But when the bombing started, the sound was different from previous times. It was not as loud as in the past. I saw smoke rising, first white, then turning to gray. I ran away." But the wind from the southeast carried the smoke toward him. "I ran 50 meters then fell down. The smoke smelled like a match stick when you burn it. I passed out."

The bombs fell at exactly 5:45 p.m., according to Abd-al-Qader's daughter-in-law Nasrin, the 40-year old wife of his son Latif, a former schoolteacher. Nasrin remembered the time with precision because her family had a rare luxury: a clock mounted on the wall. She recalled counting four aircraft, although some other villagers say there were six--and some added that a second flight of six dropped their bombs later. The smoke, said Nasrin, was red and then turned to blue. It smelled of garlic.

There was general panic and confusion; villagers were screaming, running in all directions and collapsing from the fumes. Nasrin remembered the general advice that the peshmerga had given: in the event of a chemical attack, head for the river and cover your faces with wet cloths. She grabbed a bunch of towels and ran to the riverbank with seven of her eight children. Her eldest daughter, who ran off in another direction, was later arrested and disappeared. The advice about wet towels may well have saved the lives of Nasrin and her family, since the wind blew the gas straight across the Lesser Zab river where she had fled, and one bomb even fell in the water. Dead fish floated to the surface.9

Today, a simple monument on top of the "green hill" memorializes those who died in the chemical attack on Goktapa. Survivors say that they buried as many as 300, although a list compiledlater by the PUK gives the names of 154.10 Some died in the fields as they tended their crops. Other bodies were found in the river. With the help of a borrowed bulldozer, some of the villagers dug a deep trench in front of the mosque that had been destroyed by the army in an earlier raid, and buried many of the bodies that same night. Menawwar Yasin, a woman in her early 60s, helped with the burial. "Some of their faces were black," she said, "covered with smoke. Others were ordinary but stiff. I saw one mother, nursing her infant, stiffened in that position." Other corpses were covered over by the army with a rough layer of dirt when the ground troops destroyed Goktapa several days later. There was no time to do it any other way, an officer explained to a visiting member of the Askari family--it was hot and the bodies were beginning to smell; if they were left uncovered they might cause health problems for his men.11 Whatever the exact number of those who died, it was the heaviest toll from any confirmed chemical attack other than Halabja, six weeks earlier.

[Ramo]

the tribal leaders don't directly support terrorism or have weapons of mass destruction.

Yeah, the rape and pillage of the warlords isn't at all close to terrorism or anything like that. And it's only a matter of time till they bite us in the ass.

Nothing whatsoever, Ramo. I'd just settle for reducing the bodycount so that it's measured in tens of thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands (possibly millions).

Again, I'm not convinced that the bodycount would be reduced.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Your doubts are noted and duly dismissed.

[Ramo]

Why are you so convinced that the situation will turn out for the better?

[Dis]

and in case it isn't obvious Iraq is not Afghanistan. They are much, much more civilized. They have much more wealth because of their natural resources.

Iraq will not be like Afghanistan.

'nuff said.