Iraq to compensate US victims of Saddam

I wonder when Iraqi victims of Saddam will be compensated. $400 million is a large amount of money. That's $16 per Iraqi, assuming an Iraqi population of 25 million. So Iraqi victims of Saddam have to pay American victims of Saddam. It seems strange.

'Iraq has agreed to financial compensation for Americans who say they were mistreated by executed dictator Saddam Hussein's regime during the 1990-91 Gulf war, the US embassy said on Saturday.

"The agreement was signed on September 2," US Embassy spokesman David Ranz said.

He could not confirm the size of the settlement, but the Christian Science Monitor reported that Baghdad had agreed to hand over 400 million dollars (314 million euros) in compensation.

The deal was signed between Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and US Ambassador to Baghdad Jim Jeffrey.

Iraq's August 2, 1990 assault on neighbouring Kuwait was rapidly met with a concerted international military response that pushed Saddam's forces out of the emirate and eventually ended in his ouster by a US-led coalition in 2003.

Several US citizens were held by Saddam's regime during the war over Kuwait and used as human shields to deter coalition attacks, with some claiming they were mistreated and tortured by Saddam's forces.'

Who pulverized the Iraqi state?

"Seven years after the US invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein's government and pulverized the Iraqi state, voters will go to the polls on March 7 in an election that most Iraqis hope will continue their country's uneven progress toward political stability." --ROBERT DREYFUSS

Evidently Mr. Dreyfuss does not realize that the Iraqi state had been pulverized by Saddam's regime throughout the 80s and 90s and that much of the pulverization during the last seven years has been caused by hardcore Baathists and their tools in Al Qaeda. Just three weeks ago three Baghdad hotels were pulverized by an arm of Al Qaeda. I suppose in the mind of Mr. Dreyfuss (and certainly many an Arab), those bombings can be blamed on the US invasion.

Saddam was a monster the World helped create

A few days ago I found and posted an article about the western countries that sold weapons to Saddam.  I called it "Saddam was a monster the West helped create".  Today I thought more about who helped Saddam become powerful and I remembered that Russia also sold weapons to his regime, as did China.  I searched my blog for "Russia" and found some interesting posts, but none about Russian arms sales to Iraq. The discussion about Russian arms sales took place in the comments (haloscan) section, and RhusLancia of IBC wrote a post in January 2007 titled "Where did Saddam get his chemical weapons?"  That was a good post, and in it RhusLancia pointed out the following:

• All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin.
• Around 21% of Iraq’s international chemical weapon equipment was French.
• About 100 tons of mustard gas also came from Brazil.
• The United Kingdom paid for a chlorine factory that was intended to be used for manufacturing mustard gas
• An Austrian company gave Iraq calutrons for enriching uranium. The nation also provided heat exchangers, tanks, condensers, and columns for the Iraqi chemical weapons infrastructure, 16% of the international sales.
• Singapore gave 4,515 tons of precursors for VX, sarin, tabun, and mustard gasses to Iraq.
• The Dutch gave 4,261 tons of precursors for sarin, tabun, mustard, and tear gasses to Iraq.
• Egypt gave 2,400 tons of tabun and sarin precursors to Iraq and 28,500 tons of weapons designed for carrying chemical munitions.
• India gave 2,343 tons of precursors to VX, tabun, Sarin, and mustard gasses.
• Luxemburg gave Iraq 650 tons of mustard gas precursors.
• Spain gave Iraq 57,500 munitions designed for carrying chemical weapons. In addition, they provided reactors, condensers, columns and tanks for Iraq’s chemical warfare program, 4.4% of the international sales.
• China provided 45,000 munitions designed for chemical warfare.

I was surprised to see India and Singapore on the list.  One of the Wikipedia pages that RhusLancia linked to mentions that Saudi Arabia loaned or gave $20 billion to Iraq between 1980 and 1982.  Other Gulf countries also loaned Saddam money in the 80s, including Kuwait.  

Many countries and international companies did business with Saddam, but today the most controversial  support, the support that most people talk about, was the support the US gave Saddam.  In 2005 NPR diplomatic correspondent Mike Shuster answers answered an important question:

CHADWICK: Can you say--is there any sense that the US created Saddam Hussein, that the United States essentially was responsible for the rule of Saddam Hussein?


SHUSTER: Well, certainly not created Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein came to power in the late 1960s in Iraq. He created Iraq's secret police and intelligence, and he became the number one strongman of Iraq in 1979. But after that, the United States did play a key role in all of his actions, military and political, in the Middle East. In effect, the United States chose Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, to be its surrogate for policy in the Persian Gulf region and to counter the actions of Iran, which the United States, the Reagan administration, saw as the biggest threat. And the fact that it supported Saddam Hussein in all these clandestine ways, a man who had been the pariah to the United States in the decade earlier, it seems to me could not have helped encourage Saddam's grandiosity about his role in the Arab world. He was meeting with senior US diplomats. They were looking the other way when he was using chemical weapons and developing other unconventional weapons. He couldn't have helped but to think that the United States was behind him.

The US did not create Saddam, but in the 80s the world's powerful countries helped make him a powerful dictator.  After 8 years of senseless war and a decade of ethnic cleansing, torture, and murder, in 1990 Saddam finally violated the rules of the west by invading Kuwait and thus drew the condemnation of the American President, who drew a line in the sand.  In 1991 the West, along with a few key Arab allies, destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure and its military and forced Saddam to withdraw the Iraqi army from Kuwait.  

After the 1991 Gulf War the West, led by the US, sought to destroy the remainder of Saddam's WMD via UN sanctions and inspections, ensuring that Saddam would not be able to threaten his neighbors.  They did not, however, destroy Saddam's ability to mass murder and imprison innocent Iraqis.  Iraqis not only suffered through another 12 years of murder, torture, and imprisonment, but they endured through sanctions that crippled the country's economy.  As a result of the sanctions and government neglect, ordinary Iraqis struggled to survive as Saddam built 81 palaces in the 90s. I have said many times that Saddam should have been overthrown in 1991, but I was still happy when it happened in 2003. Kan'an Makiya summarized my feelings in a 2006 interview:

It is very sad for me that Europe, which is a bastion of so many of the highest ideals to which I aspire, sat back and was happy to let the Iraqi people live under that inhuman regime of sanctions, which were killing people in vast numbers. And [Europe] allowed this situation of abuse and tyranny of the regime to continue, and did not think it morally necessary -- forget practically, maybe it's not practical -- to get rid of that kind of institutionalized abuse on that kind of scale.

Now, the United States chose to act, for whatever reason. From my point of view as an Iraqi, that decision was a thousand times better, morally speaking, than the inaction of the Europeans. The complicity of so many people in the United Nations, for instance, with the former regime. We now know so much about that because of documents that were discovered inside Iraq after the fall of the regime.

It wasn't just the Europeans who wanted Iraqis to continue to suffer under Saddam.  So did the Arabs. The Arabs who continue to defend Saddam are simply stupid. 

Iranians destroyed Iraq?

'Iraqis are increasingly using Facebook as a platform to campaign for their favorite candidates in the 2010 parliamentary elections. 


...On the National Iraqi Front’s page a woman named Wasan Wartan proclaims herself one of the secular voters whose support Mr. Allawi has sought in past elections. She wrote: “Hi everyone, God willing, the liberal Iraqi forces will win this time. God willing, Iraq will move towards a better future and the liberal parties will wipe all the tears off the face of Iraq.” Another member named Taha Tamimy wrote, “Amen, and we will get rid of the Iranians who destroyed our country.” '


What does Taha mean by "get rid of the Iranians"?  This sounds like Saddam when he expelled tens of thousands of Iraqis (aka ethnic cleansing) because they were of Iranian descent.  I doubt Allawi, being Shiite, would allow that to happen again, but it is frightening to see Arabs still saying inflammatory (and quite stupid) things and again blaming the wrong people for the violence in Iraq.  The Iranians have condemned the recent bombings in Baghdad, and the Arab "resistance" continues to mass murder innocent Iraqis,  primarily targeting government, including the Iranian embassy, but killing mostly civilians. 

Who is responsible for the violence in Iraq?

On her show tonight, Rachel Maddow said Tony Blair "would have advocated war against Iraq even if he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction there," but in the interview Blair said "I would have still thought it right to remove him..."  So is arguing for Saddam's removal the same thing as advocating a war against Iraq?

I don't think it was Blair's intention to see the deaths of so many Iraqi civilians.  Blair and Bush wanted to remove a dictator from power; they did not intend to cause the sectarian war that followed the invasion.  If we can blame all the carnage that took place after the 2003 invasion on Tony Blair and George W. Bush, we can also blame George HW Bush and John Major for the deaths of Iraqis that resulted from the 1991 invasion.

If Tony Blair can be held responsible for the crimes of Saddamists and Salafi slime, the same logic can be used to try John Major for war crimes, because the 1991 invasion of Iraq also resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.  I'm sure John Major did not intend to cause Saddam's Republican Guards to mass murder Iraqis in 1991, but the mass murder of Iraqis nevertheless happened as a result of the 1991 invasion of Iraq. Yet nobody demanded that John Major be tried as a war criminal after the 1991 invasion of Iraq.

Was the 1991 invasion of Iraq acceptable because Saddam was not removed?  Judging by how differently the Arabs and media reacted to each war, that appears to be the case.

I find the people who insist that we must punish George Bush and Tony Blair without punishing the Arab terrorists who are directly responsible for crimes against Iraqis to be naive.  On the NYT's At War blog, an Iraqi wrote a post titled 'I Have No Living Friends in Iraq Now' in which he discusses the death of his father and his ex-girlfriend.  The first comment was from a "Jim" in Austin, and it has been recommended by 15 readers: 

You can thank Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield for killing your family and friends. If these three rulers were from any country but the US, they would be at the Hague facing charges of genocide. As an American, I apoligize for these individuals for the tragedy they brought to your country.

The Iraqi "can thank Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld" for killing his family and friends.  I wonder if "Jim" realizes how insensitive his comment may seem to Iraqis.  I hated the Arabs who said that every bombing and shooting in Iraq is the responsibility of America and said nothing about the Arabs who actually committed the crimes. This kind of talk no doubt encouraged the Arab "resistance" to mass murder more Iraqis, and that made me very angry.  To see Americans saying the same thing is quite disheartening.  

Saddam was a monster the West helped create

From a 1990 WP article:

'During its eight-year war against Iran, Iraq became the world's largest retail purchaser of arms. But in recent years, it also has sought the technology to develop its own arms industry, both to free itself from dependence on foreign suppliers and to develop the kind of doomsday armaments -- nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, ballistic missiles -- that would make Iraq the Arab world's dominant power.

Experts say the development of Iraq's arms industry has its roots in the desire to lead the Arab world, as well as in Israel's humiliation of the Arab states in the 1967 Six-Day War. Saddam, whose Baath Socialist Party took power in Iraq the following year, saw the Israeli experience as a lesson in how a small but resourceful nation could become a regional superpower.

He began to put his program into practice in the mid-1970s, secretly launching projects to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, intelligence sources say.

Some of those weapons are already available and likely to be used by Iraq in any military showdown with U.S. forces. The bleak irony is that much of the technology and expertise that created those weapons was bought by Iraq in the West, sometimes by deception but often with the silent acquiescence of Western governments. Those sales continued even after Saddam's regime was accused of using chemical weapons against Iran and Iraq's own Kurdish citizens.

W. Seth Carus, defense analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the combination of petrodollars and technological help from the West made Iraq a new phenomenon in the Third World. "Iraq is a unique case. No one's really done this before," he said.

Everyone, it seems, took a slice of the Iraqi arms pie. The Soviet Union, France, China and Chile sold Baghdad much of its off-the-shelf weaponry. West Germany, France, Britain, the United States, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Brazil all sold the components, machines and tools -- much of it material with civilian as well as military application -- that are the building blocks of the modern Iraqi war machine.

As a result, military and intelligence analysts say, Iraq can make some of its own chemical weapons, has a fledgling nuclear-weapons program that could produce a bomb in five years or less and is working on a long-range missile that would enable it to deliver such a bomb to Tel Aviv, Tehran or Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

"This is a Frankenstein monster that the West created," said Hans-Heino Kopietz, Middle East analyst with Control Risks Group, a private security firm here. "We closed our eyes because some businesses wanted to make money and because Saddam was a useful tool against Iran." '

USA negligent in Iraqi deaths since 1980s

PS (Dec 2): If the 100,000 "excess deaths" in Iraq since 2003 can be blamed entirely on the US, so can deaths resulting from US support for Saddam during the 80s and the US failure in 1991 to help the Iraqi Shia who wanted very badly to see Saddam's murderous regime overthrown. UN sanctions, which Clinton continued to enforce, caused much suffering among ordinary Iraqis while Saddam built palaces.

I commented on a post entitled "Why they hate us (II): How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?" on the Palestinian Pundit, and I think my comment is worth posting here:

'According to the UN, sanctions actually resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqis by 1998, and I remember Secretary of State Madeline Albright on 60 Minutes saying the price was worth it.'

Albright's 60 Minutes interview took place in 1996, not 1998:


My comment continued:

'I think it's also worth mentioning US support of Saddam's murderous regime in the 80s and the war between Iraq and Iran, which resulted in the deaths of a million Muslims. Turns out the US was supporting both sides.

Furthermore, the Shia rebellion in 1991 was brutally put down, and one of Saddam's guys admitted the regime killed 300,000 Shia (Muslims) in April, 1991 alone. They did this as US soldiers stood not far away - Bush apparently gave the order not to intervene, as his Saudi buddies did not want the Shia to take over Iraq. I consider the US to be partially negligent in the mass murders committed by Saddam's regime, and I think the real numbers are much larger.'

In a second comment I also posted a link to this video, which I've posted before and watched again today, only to be angered again:



I'm glad the US overthrew Saddam's murderous regime, but it shoulda happened in 1991.

Iraqi Kurds sue US companies that sold chemicals

to Saddam's regime, who used them to make chemical weaopns in the 1980s. The result was horrific.

Lawsuit: Firms sold poison gas ingredients to Iraq
By DAVID DISHNEAU

HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — Three companies illegally sold materials to Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s for making chemical weapons that were used to carry out attacks against thousands of Iraqi Kurds and ultimately caused scores of chronic ailments, according to a federal lawsuit.

The complaint filed Tuesday in Baltimore by five Iraqi expatriates and the Nashville, Tenn.-based Kurdish National Congress seeks class certification for an estimated 100,000 Kurds. The Republic of Iraq is also named as a defendant.

continued

State Dept ignored warnings

State Dept. ignored Blackwater warnings

Yuri Cortez / AFP/Getty Images

ACCOUNTABILITY: Complaints about Blackwater guards' behavior were acknowledged by some in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, but received little high-level attention.

Diplomats had raised concerns about guards' endangering of Iraqi civilians, but the complaints got little attention.

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 7, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The State Department, which is facing growing criticism of its policy on private security contractors, overlooked repeated warnings from U.S. diplomats in the field that guards were endangering Iraqi civilians and undermining U.S. efforts to win support from the population, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Ever since the contractors were granted immunity from Iraqi courts in June 2004 by the U.S.-led occupation authority, diplomats have cautioned that the decision to do so was "a bomb that could go off at any time," said one former U.S. official.
continued

Let's start blaming the murderers, please!

Ever since I first read Ali's post Arab Wein Wo Tanboora Wein! I have thought about the Iraqis who constantly attack the current Iraqi government for failing to provide security while not mentioning a word about the bombers who are actually RESPONSIBLE for the mass murder of Iraqis on a daily basis. I just left this comment for that post:

Ali, I can't help but say the following. I know we're supposed to be polite here and I apologize in advance if this comment offends you or anybody else. But I must get it off my shoulders.

I have noticed that many Iraqis have been blaming the Iraqi government for failing to provide security while not mentioning a word about the bombers who mass murder Iraqis. In this post, you have used a popular Iraqi idiom to slam the Iraqi government for not reacting properly to the murder of Rahim al-Maliki. I am with you on this, and I agree that the Iraqi govt has not done enough to provide security for all Iraqis. They seem to sit comfortably in the Green Zone while ordinary Iraqis are murdered on a daily basis. But I think that this idiom, '3arab wain w 6anboora wain' applies equally, if not more so, to the Iraqis who constantly attack the current Iraqi govt without mentioning a single word about the salafi khewat el GA7BA [brothers of whores] who mass murder Iraqis like this. I'm sick of hearing Iraqis who expect the Iraqi govt to wave some magic wand that will prevent these salafi scum from wearing explosives and detonating them among our beloved Iraqis like Rahim al-Mailiki. At least mention a word about these murderous moronic "Muslims" before, or after slamming the Iraqi govt.

Was that too much? Am I mean? Ali seems to be a cool cat, but I had to do that to feel relieved.

Stealing From the Poor and Giving to the Rich

Let us not forget about the complicity of the United Nations in starving the Iraqi people. I have asserted before that fundamentalism spreads as a result of poverty.

Stealing From the Poor and Giving to the Rich

'As von Sponeck spoke, I reflected on my lengthy interview with Iraq’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Mohammed Al-Duri. Al Duri, being interviewed for the first time by English speaking media since claiming his post at the UN, revealed to me in early 2001, in equally shocking details, what sanctions had done to his country and people. He claimed that the UN was part of the problem. Led by two countries, the US and Britain, the UN Oil for Food Program and the “humanitarian” mission it established in Iraq was, he said, robbing the country blind and mismanaging funds, with needy Iraqi families receiving next to nothing. He spoke of the manipulation of Iraq’s wealth for political purposes and alleged that the UN was a tool in the hands of the United States government aimed at encouraging widespread popular disatisfaction with Saddam’s government before the country was dragged off to war.

In hindsight, Al-Duri’s assessment was very accurate. Promoting his new book: “A Different Kind of War,” von Sponeck reiterated in essence and substance Al-Duri’s claims; the only difference is that von Sponeck was an insider; his numbers and stories were impeccable and could hardly be contested. It’s no wonder that one and a half years after assuming his post in Baghdad in 1998, he resigned. Even at such uncongenial bureaucracy like the UN, some people still possess a living conscience; von Sponeck was and remains a man of great qualities.

By March 2003, when Iraq was invaded by American forces, the UN was generating $64 billion in sales of Iraqi oil, according to von Sponeck. But, scandalously, only $28 billion reached the Iraqi people. Around 70 percent of the Iraqi people benefited from the program. If distributed evenly, each Iraqi received half a US dollar per day. According to UN figures, an individual living under one dollar per day is classified as living in “abject poverty”. Even during the most destructive phases of war with Iran, Iraq has managed to provide relatively high living standards. Its hospitals were neither dilapidated, nor did its oil industry lie in ruins. Only after the UN sanctions in 1991 did the Iraqis suffer at such an appalling magnitude. Alas, the tyranny of Saddam expanded to become the tyranny of the international community as well.

“Neither the welfare of the Iraqi people nor the sovereignty of the Iraqis was respected,” by the UN and its two main benefactors, asserted von Sponeck. The UN Security Council’s “elected 10 or veto-wielding five” had nothing for Iraq but “empty words,” but there were “deliberate efforts to make life uncomfortable (for the Iraqis) through the Oil for Food program.” All efforts to modernize Iraq’s oil industry were blocked, said von Sponeck, all at the behest of “two governments that blocked all sorts of items,” which could’ve made that possible: Again, the United States and Britain, coincidently the same two countries that invaded and currently occupy Iraq. The logic in all of this is clear; the “preemptive” war on Iraq was factored into the sanctions from its early days.

The assessments of Al-Duri and von Sponeck converge, revealing the disagreeable intents of the US government and its followers many years before the horror of 9/11 polarized public opinion and allowed Washington’s political elites, the neoconservatives and contractors to make their case for war.

But where did the money go, during the sanctions and now, four years after the invasion?

Von Sponeck reported that a large chunk of the money generated from Iraq’s oil, 55 percent, went to fund the UN’s own inadequate “humanitarian” programs. Much of the rest was taken by the UN compensation commission, entrusted in handling claims of damages made by those allegedly harmed by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. According to von Sponeck, the Iraqi oil pie was so large, there was plenty for everyone: Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, and all the rest. But most ironically, the commission awarded a large sum of money to two Israeli kibbutzim in the Occupied Syrian Golan Heights, for allegedly losing some of their income due to the fact that the war damaged the tourism industry in Israel.'

US Complicity in Saddam's Crimes

This is part of a documentary entitled Web of Deceit, and it shows Donald Rumsfeld's reaction to video of him shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983.

US & French Complicity in Iraqi Invasion of Iran

An excellent documentary (thanks CSS) that points to American and French complicity in Iraq's invasion of Iran.



Watch the rest here.