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2/02/2003 03:29:00 PM | Justin Is this apologism? Op-ed on Kurdish gassings at Halabja from NYT There's an interesting Op-Ed in the Friday New York Times written by a former CIA analyst, Stephen C. Pelletiere. Mr Pelletiere questions whether Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 1988 gassing of the Kurds at Halabja. According to Pelletiere, the classified information produced by the US government at the time pointed to Iran's guilt in the gassings(not Iraq's). As Bush appears to have based much of his case for war on Iraq on this issue of Saddam's "gassing of his own people" at Halabja, it seems pretty important to me that we get the story right. A while ago, Tim posted something which accused the radical left of apologism for Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and others. I argued that I didn't think we should impulsively write off people who question accepted stories of war crimes and massacres. If true, this is an example of how such stories can be more open to debate than one might think. I don't actually know very much about this guy Stephen Pelletiere, except that he's been pushing this version of the story since as early as 1990, apparently without much success. If anyone has any information about why this guy shouldn't be trusted, or why his claims should be ignored, as they have been for so long, please share. As an aside, last time, when I posted something by Scott Ritter, someone pointed out that he had charges of pedophilia brought against him, essentially implying that he could not even be trusted with your daughter, let alone the real story of UNSCOM. So I'm curious whether Mr. Pelletiere might not also conveniently turn out to be a pedophile. If anyone can muckrack something like this, I would be quite impressed:) No seriously, I'd really like to know if there's any good reason why this version of the story should not be believed. perma link |
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