Chem Ali and the Media

  • Thread starter Thread starter gilliam
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
G

gilliam

Guest
How Will the Media Spin This One?

The Washington Times provides %between%background on ‘Chemical Ali’, expected to be the first member of Saddam’s regime to stand trial:
On March 16, 1988, 5,000 residents of Halabja, a Kurdish city in eastern Iraq, were killed and 10,000 injured when Saddam Hussein’s army attacked with chemical weapons — perhaps the largest-scale use of such weapons against a civilian population in modern times. That morning, Iraqi Air Force planes bombed the city with a lethal chemical cocktail of mustard gas and sarin, tabun and VX nerve agents. Two days ago, the man accused of overseeing the attack, Gen. Ali Hasan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, appeared before a judicial tribunal in Baghdad. He is likely to go on trial next year for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with Halabja and a series of other atrocities allegedly carried out by forces under his command. In Halabja on that terrible day, families hiding in their basements (the safest place to be when Iraqi troops launched conventional artillery attacks) began vomiting and died of suffocation as a result of the chemical weapons attack. As the gas spread, birds began dropping out of trees, cows collapsed and women and children attempting to flee the city went blind. As children fell, their panic-stricken parents abandoned them by the side of the roads leading out of town. Dr. Christine Gosden, a professor of medical genetics at the University of Liverpool in Great Britain, who has visited Halabja to study the effects of chemical weapons, reported that long-term effects of their use include eye and respiratory problems, severe skin problems, mental difficulties, miscarriages and infant deaths.

<…>

Later, addressing members of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party, al-Majid spoke about the Kurds on a tape obtained by Human Rights Watch: “I will kill them all with chemical weapons…Who is going to say anything? The international community? F—- them!”

How will the media spin it? Here are some early indicators:

The London Telegraph: Trial of Chemical Ali can’t end the suffering of his victims

The Seattle Times: Iraqis criticized for secret hearings

Dallas Mornng News: Hearings for Hussein regime blasted

The Washington Post: Can this man get a fair trial?

The trial is at least a month away.
 
40.png
HagiaSophia:
If all else fails - turn him over to a Kurdish court…
Click to expand...
Just turn him loose in Kurdistan.
 
Poor Chemical Ali, The U.S. is making him out to be a bad person. Shouldn’t we be focusing on soldiers that place undewear over terrorists heads instead of on a guy that gased women and children. The NY TImes ran 46 front page stories on Abu Graib, how many will run on the trial of this peaceful victim?
 
Why do you ask, “how will the media spin this one?” It is a clear fact that this man was involved with a very bad act, 16 years ago.
 
40.png
atsheeran:
Apparently it is not clear to everyone.

Who really gassed the Kurds?
Click to expand...
Pelletiere’s claim is that in March 1988, *both Iran and *Iraq gassed the Kurdish city of Halabja, which they were fighting over. Pelletiere’s view—which is not widely shared by others—is that the Iraqis used mustard gas, while the Iranians used a much deadlier cyanide-based gas, and that it was this cyanide gas that killed most or all of the thousands of Kurdish civilians who died at Halabja. Pelletiere further suggests that Israel conned the world into thinking that Iraq was a gas-wielding demon, and that it did so because Iraq posed a much greater menace to Israel than did Iran.

Human Rights Watch has a cache of documents that the Kurds captured from the Iraqis during the war. Search for the word “chemical” or the word “special” (the Iraqi euphemism for gas attacks was “special attacks.”)

HRW reports

Joost Hiltermann of Human Rights Watch is writing a book about Halabja and other incidents in which the Kurds were gassed. He says that he’s seen no evidence that Iran used chemical warfare during the Iran-Iraq war and plenty of evidence that Iraq did. Much of the latter is available online. Here, for example, is a description of the chemical attack on Halabja from the 1993 Human Rights Watch report, Genocide in Iraq:

Those outside in the streets could see clearly that these were Iraqi, not Iranian aircraft, since they flew low enough for their markings to be legible. In the afternoon, at about 3:00, those who remained in the shelters became aware of an unusual smell. Like the villagers in the Balisan Valley the previous spring, they compared it most often to sweet apples, or to perfume, or cucumbers, although one man says that it smelled “very bad, like snake poison.” No one needed to be told what the smell was. …** Some tried to plug the cracks around the entrance with damp towels, or pressed wet cloths to their faces, or set fires. But in the end they had no alternative but to emerge into the streets. It was growing dark and there were no streetlights; the power had been knocked out the day before by artillery fire. In the dim light, the people of Halabja could see nightmarish scenes. Dead bodies—human and animal—littered the streets, huddled in doorways, slumped over the steering wheels of their cars. Survivors stumbled around, laughing hysterically, before collapsing.**

Lots of info in the article here:
slate.msn.com/id/2063934/
 
Michael C:
Poor Chemical Ali, The U.S. is making him out to be a bad person. Shouldn’t we be focusing on soldiers that place undewear over terrorists heads instead of on a guy that gased women and children. The NY TImes ran 46 front page stories on Abu Graib, how many will run on the trial of this peaceful victim?
Click to expand...
My sentiments exactly The New York Times is sick. I can’t even read their paper anymore. I used to read it thinking that I needed to know what they said. It got too sick for me around the 20th article about Abu Graib. 👍
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top