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Iraq- Did Portugal have all the facts?/Iran was responsible for the Halabja gassing in 1988/one of the pretexts
Iraq- Did Portugal have all the facts?
The Portugal News has received a full transcript of a report
by a former CIA senior political analyst that states that Iran
was responsible for the mass murder of 5,000 Kurds by chemicals
at the Iraqi township of Halabja in 1988.
The Halabja massacre was one of the pretexts put forward by the
US Government for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Some political commentators, including Matthew Norman of the
UK Guardian newspaper, are saying that if the report had been
made public before the build up to the present conflict in Iraq,
Portugal and Spain might well have had second thoughts about
supporting the US and British invasion.
The author of the report, Mr. C. Pelletiere, who was responsible
for investigating the incident on behalf of the US Government,
states that the gassing took place during a battle between Iraqi
and Iranian forces.
Immediately after the battle the United States Defence Intelligence
Agency produced a classified report, which clearly illustrated
that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds.
A team of investigators, under the direction of Pelletierre,
discovered that the condition of the Kurds' bodies indicated
they had been killed by a cyanide-based gas, which the Iranians
had been known to use.
At that time the Iraqis were using mustard gas and there is no
record that they possessed the cyanide based blood agent gas.
Pelletiere, who worked as a CIA agent during the Iraq - Iran
war and was also a professor at the US Army War College from
1988 to 2000, was privy to much of the classified material that
flowed through Washington regarding the Persian Gulf.
He headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would
fight a war against the US.
Part of his report on the Halabja massacre was published by the
New York Times last January but was ignored by other major newspapers
and TV stations.
But Pelletiere's report is not the only example of political
spin doctoring concerning the drumming up of support for a war
against Iraq.
A claim by the British Government that it was in possession of
documents showing that Iraq had attempted to buy 500 tons of
uranium from Africa has been shown to be false.
Copies of the documents were handed to General Mohamed ElBaradei,
Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In a presentation to the United Nations Security Council ElBaradei
has proved that the documents were forgeries.
His testimony was backed up by the United Nations' weapons inspectors.
Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, has called for an investigation
into what he describes as a campaign to deceive the public.
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