• Iraq is the source of the world's highest-grade oil.
• In the late 19th century, Germany and England were competing over the "development" of this area of the world, in the colonial sense of the word. Investigations were beginning into the natural resources of the area, and both colonial powers were attempting to secure the loyalty of the area's ruling class. Britain was mainly interested at first because Iraq might serve as a direct land route to her all-important colony in India. Meanwhile, Germany was granted rights to build a railroad from Iraq to the Persian Gulf, furthering their goal of building one complete rail system from "Berlin to Baghdad."
• In 1901, the British obtained concessions allowing them to exploit the oil resources of the area. In 1909 the Anglo-Persian (later Anglo-Iranian) Oil Company was created, and the navy switched to oil in 1912, making 'black gold' the primary strategic importance of the region up until the present day. In 1914, after the Ottoman Empire entered WWI on the side of Germany, British forces landed near Iraq's southern tip. Motivated by their need to secure their oil fields, they marched on Baghdad. After the war, England wanted to maintain a mandate over Iraq (despite promises to Arab leaders that they would do no such thing). Britain had taken over German plans to build a railroad across the region, but was planning on going from Palestine to Baghdad. Despite their desire for full control, a popular uprising forced them to allow local leadership. However, the British mandate and British advisors remained, and the oil and revenues continued to flow to British hands. Even after the Iraqi monarchy was established in 1922, a treaty with Britain meant that "the king [of Iraq was forced to] heed British advice on all matters affecting British interests and that British officials serve in specific Iraqi government posts (Encarta Encyclopedia history of Iraq). In 1931, oil exploitation was made official when the Iraqi government signed a deal with the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) allowing continued exploitation if the government was given a share of the profits. The IPC represented Royal-Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, various French companies, and the Standard Oil of America.
• During World War II the Iraqi government was overthrown several times as anti-colonial and pro-British forces battled it out for supremacy. In the end, British troops landed and a short war between the two countries ensued. The Iraqi military was defeated quite rapidly, and a pro-British leader, Said, was installed. As the British Empire crumbled and American interests took over, Washington, too, saw the importance of the area. In 1945, an official State Department document described Iraqi oil fields as "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history" (cited in Pilger, Rulers, p. 64).
• The oil continued to be completely protected despite changes of rule until 1958, when the monarchy was overthrown by the left-leaning Kassem (Qasim). He permitted trade unions, improved the conditions of workers, and enacted land reform in an attempt to end the feudal countryside. His major mistake came when he attempted to secure a share of oil reserves for his own nation, however, and passed "Public Law 80, which dispossessed the IPC of 99.5 percent of its concession area, leaving it to operate only in those areas currently in production. The new arrangement significantly increased oil revenues accruing to the government. Kassem also announced the establishment of an Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) to exploit the new territory" (History of Iraq). It is important to make clear that I am not under any illusions that Kassem was some kind of perfect ruler. He was also a dictator and was not necessarily a popular leader. The point is, however, that as we will see later on when the U.S. installs an even more oppressive regime, is that America is supportive of the repressive as long as they are loyal. The point is not that America is the bad force in the world fighting against the good. The point is that America is not "the good" - that it is not fighting for justice and harmony in the world - that it is fighting for power through loyalty and the security of its interests.
• Saddam Hussein's gangster wing of the Ba'ath Party, in which he played an important behind-the-scenes role even before his actual rise to power in 1979, came to power with the help of the CIA in 1963. They immediately broke up first the leftists and then the oil-workers' union. Ali Saleh Sa'adi, the Secretary-General of the Ba'ath party, said "We came to power on a CIA train." Said Aburish, Saddam Hussein's biographer, noted that "Saddam has a great deal to thank the CIA for. He can thank them for bringing the Ba'ath Party to power, for helping him personally, for providing him with financial aid during the war with Iran, for protecting him against internal coups d'état" (both quotes from Pilger, Rulers, p. 65-66).
• Unfortunately, the Ba'ath still had socialist tendencies and relations with Moscow during their early years, and as such, could not be completely trusted. Iran was thus supported by the United States in an effort to undermine the Ba'ath regime. The party that the U.S. had brought to power in '63 was proving to be a bit too independent, but at this point the United States was simply trying to give them a lesson and hopefully teach them to submit. Also remember that the Shah in Iran during this period, our ally, had been re-installed by the CIA in 1953, after a popular revolution had kicked him out in 1951.
• The Kurdish rebellion was also being supported by the U.S. in the early '70's, not because they supported the Kurdish cause but because they wanted to destabilize the Ba'ath regime. A CIA memo of 1974 makes clear that the U.S. didn't want the Kurds to gain rights, noting that "Iran, like ourselves, has seen benefit in a stalemate situation... in which Iraq is intrinsically weakened by the Kurds' refusal to relinquish semi-autonomy. Neither Iran nor ourselves wish to see the matter resolved one way or the other" (Blum, Rogue State, p. 145). In fact, when Iraq suddenly signed a peace agreement with Iran in 1975 (and thus began showing allegiance to Western desires), the U.S. immediately pulled out all support of the Kurds. In the words of Kissinger at the time, "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work" (After Saddam Hussein). In other words, 'we are here for our own purposes, not to help.' An investigation in 1976 by Congressman Otis Pike, called the Pike Commission Report, looked into our involvement with the Kurds. The report claimed that: "Documents in the Committee's possession clearly show that the President [Richard Nixon], Dr. Kissinger and the foreign head of state [the Shah of Iran] hoped that our clients [the Kurds] would not prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's neighboring country [Iraq]. This policy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting" (Chessboard Changes). This report was supressed by the White House under advice from the CIA.
• After we abandoned the Kurds, while encouraging them to continue their revolt without assistance, the Iraqi regime took the next logical step - they began to brutally destroy the Kurdish population. Quoting again from the Pike Commission:

  "The insurgents were clearly taken by surprise. Their adversaries [Iraq], knowing of the impending aid cut-off, launched an all out search-and-destroy campaign the day after the agreement [between Iraq and Iran] was signed. The autonomy movement was over and our former clients scattered before the central government's superior forces. The cynicism of the U.S. and its ally had not yet completely run its course, however. Despite direct pleas from the insurgent leader and the CIA station chief in the area to the President and Dr. Kissinger, the U.S. refused to extend humanitarian assistance to the thousands of refugees created by the abrupt termination of military aid."

  One tragic Kurdish story of the time tells that "In 1975 the Iraqi army came and rounded up everyone in the widows' village, taking them to a compound in the southern desert. On the walls of the huts, which were unfit for human habitation, was scrawled 'Dar al-Fana' -- 'House of Annihilation.' Many people died. Eventually the survivors were allowed to return to the north, and ended up in Qushtapa. But in 1983, after Iraq began to lose the war with revolutionary Iran, the army returned. One night soldiers surrounded the village, seizing every grown male, including the blind and the crippled. The women and children cried and tried to follow their husbands, sons, and fathers, but Iraqi forces fired on them, forcing them back" (After Saddam Hussein). This is the brutal repression America supported, by withdrawing the help we were giving the Kurds, which was justified, after all, because we weren't engaged in "missionary work."

• The Shah's rule in Iran proved to be running out of steam as internal resistance mounted. Thus, in 1979, he was ousted in a second popular revolution. This almost instantly led to war with Iraq (1980-88), during which Washington sold arms to both sides, although internal documents show that they were urged, in their support, to 'lean towards Iraq.' This is mainly because they knew Hussein was learning to be a loyal servant of Washington, while the recent popular Islamist revolution in Iran had questionable loyalties. In the Iran-Contra Affair, a major scandal was exposed where revenues from selling arms to Iran were being used to wage guerilla warfare in Nicaragua against a popularly elected government. This was at the same time that the U.S. had urged all other allies to cease aid to Iran, although even Israel (!) had been doing so at the beginning of the war.
• Based on a US Senate Committee on Export Administration report of 1994, we know that between 1984 (at the latest) and 1989, private American suppliers were exporting all kinds of chemical components to Iraq, after obtaining licensing by the US Department of Commerce. According to the report, "These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction." They included:
  • Bacillus anthracis - Causes anthrax
  • Clostridium botulinum - Source of botulinum toxin
  • Histoplasma capsulatam - Causes a disease that attacks lungs, heart, brain, and spinal cord
  • Brucella melitensis - Bacteria that can do major damage to organs
  • Clostridium perfringens - Highly toxic bacteria that causes systemic illness
  • Clostridium tetani - Also highly toxigenic
  • E.coli, genetic materials, human and bacterial DNA, precursors to chemical-warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities and chemical-warhead filling equipment were also exported (all according to this report).
  • The report mentions: "It was later learned that these micro-organisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program" (Blum, Rogue State, p. 121-123).
• Thus when he was the most dangerous, and committing the worst crimes against humanity (gassing the domestic Kurdish and Shiite population, as well as that of Iran, for example), Saddam Hussein was a close ally of both the United States and Britain. As a matter of fact, we were selling him arms up until just a few weeks before the start of the Gulf War. A US Department of Energy official discovered that advanced nuclear reactors were being shipped to Iraq. He tried alerting his superiors about the evidence, but was moved to another job. "We knew about their bomb programme, but Saddam was our ally," said a former member of the Bush administration (This quote comes from Out of the Ashes, and is cited in Pilger's book as well).
• So, if Baghdad was indeed close to reaching nuclear capacity around the time they invaded Kuwait, and had a stockpile of chemical weapons, it was only because we had provided them with the technology. Until an ounce of independent thought was displayed, his monstrous crimes against his people were not a problem for the United States. When John Kelly, US Assistant Secretary of State, visited Baghdad in 1989, he told Hussein, "You are a force for moderation in the region, and the United States wants to broaden her relationship with Iraq." When human rights groups showed evidence of mustard gas being used against Iran and Kurds, the State Department refused to condemn him.
• If we recognize that Hussein was our friend during this period (and that we were aware of his crimes), then obviously our motive for intervening after the invasion of Kuwait was not humanitarian. If we didn't care about the Kurds while they were killed off, why would we care about Kuwaitis? And the fact of the matter is that Kuwait was often administered by Baghdad in pre-colonial times, and Hussein was claiming that he wanted to make it part of Iraq once again. Not that this justifies Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, but it is important to note that the U.S. administration has supported similar moves in other cases. The most obvious case would be the Indonesian government invading East Timor after it was de-colonized, where our government supported the occupying side (which, of course, led to the wholesale slaughter of hundred of thousands in East Timor, but refer to the above link if you're curious about that). The point is that the excuse of opposing one group's taking over another is completely hollow, because such actions are only opposed when they also happen to conflict with U.S. interests. In the case of Kuwait, two-fifths of the world's oil reserves were jeopardized by its seizure.
• During our bombing campaign in 1991, "a civilian air raid shelter was destroyed by a depleted-uranium projectile, incinerating to charred blackness many hundreds of people, a great number of them women and children. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, reiterating US military statements that the shelter had been a command-and-control center, said: 'We don't know why civilians were at that location, but we do know that Saddam Hussein does not share our value for the sanctity of human life'"(Blum, Rogue State, p. 8). I guess she hadn't heard about the destruction of the Kurds, which we supported.
• During the Gulf War, we encouraged the Iraqi citizens to revolt against the government, claiming that we were there to help them and would defend them in their revolt. Bush Sr. called on "the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their hands and force Saddam Hussein to step aside." They took this call seriously, and major rebellions broke out in both the southern and northern parts of Iraq. As soon as the war ended, however, we decided to leave Saddam in power (we wouldn't even let Iraqi resistance forces use weapons we had confiscated from Saddam to fight him) for the sake of stability. When the Iraqi people continued to rebel, they were brutally repressed by the regime. Said Aburish said "The opposition found themselves confronted with the United States helping Saddam Hussein against them. The Americans actually stopped rebels from reaching arms depots. They denied them shelter. They gave Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard safe passage through American lines in order to attack the rebels. They did everything except join the fight on his side." Remember that this all took place after the Gulf War - after we had decided he was the 'Hitler' of the Middle East....
• Further evidence of our lack of concern for human life (or even common decency) in Iraq can be seen by our actions since the end of the Gulf War, when we continued to wage low-intensity warfare on the country, and imposed the most brutal sanctions in human history (and still continue to do so). "Economic sanctions have driven a population whose levels of nutrition, schooling, and public services were once well above regional standards into fathomless misery. Before 1990 the country had a per capita GNP of over $3000. Today it is under $500, making Iraq one of the poorest societies on Earth [(Peter Pellet, The Siege of Iraq, p. 155).] A land that once had high levels of literacy and an advanced system of health-care had been devastated by the West. Its social structure is in ruins, its people are denied the basic necessities of existence, its soil is polluted by uranium-tipped warheads. According to UN figures of 2001, some 60 per cent of the population have no regular access to clean water, and over 80 per cent of schools need substantial repairs. In 1997 the FAO reckoned that 27 per cent of Iraqis were suffering from chronic malnutrition, and 70 per cent of all women were anaemic [(UN Report on the Current Humanitarian Situation in Iraq, March 1999)]." This entire quote comes from Tariq Ali's book, p. 145.
• As the effects of the sanctions became more and more obvious, those who were close enough to observe them first-hand were unable to ignore what was happening. Thus Denis Halliday, the UN's co-ordinator of Humanitarian Relief to Iraq resigned in 1998. He claimed he had joined the UN to "help people, not harm them," and noted that "I am resigning because the policy of economic sanctions is totally bankrupt. We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple as that... five thousand children are dying every month... I don't want to administer a programme that results in figures like these." In an interview with Pilger (in Iraq, 1999), he continued on this point, talking about how he helped four sick children by smuggling in drugs for them: "... to help them, I had to act illegally. I had to breach my own economic sanctions, so to speak, established by the Security Council, led by Washington and London... The very provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and the Declaration of Human Rights are being set aside. We are waging a war, through the United Nations, on the children and people of Iraq... It's a monstrous situation... for all of us who are part of some democratic system, who are in fact responsible for the policies of our governments..." His question was one that no one truly concerned with human rights should have been able to ignore: "How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?" Two days after his resignation, Jutta Burghart, the head of the World Food Programme in Iraq also resigned in objection to what was being done to the Iraqi people (Pilger, Rulers, p. 52-54). Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, was brave enough to include civilian casualties of bombings in his briefs, but the Clinton and Blair administrations demanded his resignation. He has also spoken out against the sanctions.
• In 1999, UNICEF (a UN organization) conducted the first authoritative study in the area and estimated that 500,000 children under the age of five had died as a direct result of our sanctions. Mainstream thought will have us believe that while yes, we have not backed down on our sanctions, it is Hussein's refusal to properly negotiate that has kept his population in misery. This is an important argument to refute - although it's not very difficult. We can admit that yes, perhaps if Hussein gave in to US demands the sanctions would be lifted. However, if the United States truly cared about human rights at all, they would have been forced to lift the sanctions years ago.
• Secretary of State Madeline Albright appeared on 60 Minutes on 5/12/96 and was asked about Iraq. A short video clip can be downloaded here (right click and choose save target as). Here's an excerpt:
  • Lesley Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
  • Madeline Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it. [italics mine]"
  • There are several important things to note at this point. First, the fact that Albright didn't make any attempt to argue the statistic. Second, and possibly more important, the fact that Albright's rationale is very similar to that of the terrorists who participated in the Sept. 11 attacks - that a multitude of civilians lives are worth sacrificing for some political gain.
  • (If you've noticed that this interview came before the UNICEF study, good for you... you're watching the dates. I noticed this myself and looked around for an answer to how this could make sense. It turns out, the 60 Minutes interview was based on a preliminary study in 1995 by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, which found that 567,000 children under five were killed. There was another study done by Columbia University's Richard Garfield in 1998 which published much lower numbers, 106,000 to 227,000, but was much less comprehensive than the UNICEF study.)
• Our excuse for imposing sanctions was supposedly to strangle the Hussein regime into submission, and in the long run to help the people of Iraq. Well, helping the people has obviously been a failure (hopefully anyone who reads this site will agree that one million deaths is never a victory, especially when those deaths are occurring on the side we claim to be fighting for). As far as hurting the regime, it would seem common sense that by giving the citizens a reason to hate America, we've only strengthened Saddam's rule.
• For further (lengthy) debate concerning the sanctions, here are some external links that will open in a new window. Here is a statistical analysis arguing that estimated death figures might be too high. Here is an in-depth investigation not only into the effects of the sanctions, but also media complacency and its effect. A debate between two opposing views on the sanctions can be found here.
• Now let us examine, finally, the excuse for attacking and toppling Saddam in the near future. Besides the fact that he's described as a terrible monster (which is very true), the only way an actual invasion can be justified is by claiming that he presents an immediate and terrible threat to not only his neighbors in the region (in other words, Israel), but also to the United States. Interestingly enough, those who claim this is true (Washington, London) have yet to show any solid evidence for their claims, but expect us to believe that they're holding on to such evidence. Hopefully, after seeing our past actions in the region, it's a little harder not to be skeptical. This is especially true when those who are opposing the war are able to provide extensive evidence against it. Take, for example, Scott Ritter, a pronounced Republican (who voted for George W.) and former UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq. Click here for an extremely enlightening article concerning his experiences uncovering weapons stored in Iraq (it's long). This is also an extremely interesting article (Washington Post) about top level military officials in the US who think containment is a better policy than "regime change." The BBC also has an interesting page showing Washington's (supposed) case for attacking Iraq. Also please refer to Zmag's extended coverage of the Coming War With Iraq here.

NOTE: Much of my information for this section is taken from John Pilger's new book, The New Rulers of the World. His section on post-Gulf War Iraq is much more extensive than the facts I've outlined above, and includes personal testimonies of people he met on a trip to Iraq (including doctors, etc), as well as interviews with those involved in the sanctions in the United States. If you're at all interested in the issue, this book is a must. Other sources include Andrew and Patrick Cockburn's Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, William Blum's Rogue State and Tariq Ali's The Clash of Fundamentalisms.