A rchive Date
[ 21-12-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.canoe.com/Columnists/brodbeck_dec21.html
Saddam's accomplices won't face justice
By TOM BRODBECK -- Winnipeg Sun
December 21, 2003
The main reason there will never be a real tribunal to uncover the full breadth of Saddam Hussein's atrocities is that his accomplices will never let it happen.
I'm not talking about the henchmen who carried out Hussein's orders or the frontline soldiers who pulled the triggers on the chemical weapons that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians and Iraqis in the 1980s and early 1990s.
No, I'm talking about the people who partnered with Hussein during those years, supplying him with weapons, military intelligence, funding and international backing.
The people who not only turned a blind eye to the gassing of innocent victims, but those who helped him do it.
I'm talking primarily about the United States. But there were others, too, including France and the former Soviet Union, Britain and Germany, each of whom played a role in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, supplying arms and money to both sides, no one protesting the genocide that was going on.
But the U.S. played a particularly loathsome role in these war crimes -- one the superpower should be held accountable for.
The invasion of Iraq by the U.S. has been a dismal failure, by any logical measure. There were no weapons of mass destruction found, Iraq was not an imminent threat to the world and there is no evidence whatsoever of Iraqi ties to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
The Bush administration, in fact, lied to the world about the alleged evidence it had.
The only objective left is to bring peace and democracy to Iraq -- an elusive goal that was an add-on should all else fail for the U.S., which it did. So far, they are nowhere near achieving that goal.
The only good thing to come out of the invasion of Iraq so far is the arrest of Saddam Hussein, although it hardly makes up for the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians.
If you asked most reasonable people at the outset of this invasion if the murder of 10,000 innocent lives, or more, was worth the capture of Saddam Hussein, I bet most would have been opposed.
Nevertheless, Hussein has been caught and he should be tried for his crimes and then executed. There is no point keeping him alive. It would only allow him to lead as a martyr from a jail cell somewhere.
But if we're going to try those involved in these war crimes, we had better round up ALL the key players.
We owe it to the Iraqi people to bring all those responsible for the mass killings to justice.
And that includes the U.S.
The Reagan administration in the 1980s did not commit these crimes but they did help Hussein in his evil deeds.
The U.S. didn't pull the trigger. But they drove the get-away car and supplied the bank robber with the sawed-off shotgun. And for that, they should be held accountable.
There is a voluminous body of evidence confirming that the U.S. government and U.S. companies were supplying Iraq with weapons, military equipment and raw material for chemical weapons.
The 1994 Senate Banking Committee is probably the most compelling of those, confirming the shipments of supplies, the licensing of equipment by the U.S. government and the diplomatic ties between the Reagan administration and Saddam Hussein.
Reagan took Iraq off the terrorist list in 1982, paving the way for a flood of exports of military equipment to Iraq. The U.S. issued credit to Hussein to help fund those supplies. They shared satellite information with him and sent presidential envoys to meet with the dictator, including the now infamous trip by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 1983, who was then a private businessman and a former defence secretary.
When the Senate attempted to impose economic sanctions on Iraq in 1988, which would have blocked further arms and equipment shipments, the White House blocked the move.
The U.S. did everything in its power to prevent Iran from winning the war, even with the horrific knowledge that their backing of Hussein was contributing to the gassing of hundreds of thousands of people.
That should be on the historical record, through a tribunal.
To ignore it is to betray historical accuracy.
Holocaust deniers betray historical accuracy.
But I don't think the U.S.'s complicity in Saddam Hussein's atrocities will ever come out in a meaningful way in a tribunal, not even if Hussein's trial takes place in Iraq.
Because for the foreseeable future, Iraq is an American-occupied state with a U.S.-appointed governing council.
The parameters of any Iraqi tribunal will undoubtedly be set by the U.S., who will want to keep it as narrow in scope as possible.
Uncle Sam calls the shots in Baghdad.
And I don't think that's going to change for a very long time.
Tom Brodbeck is the Sun's city columnist. He can be reached by e-mail at tbrodbeck@wpgsun.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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