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CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Won't Get Fooled Again
2. One Link: What the Heck, Let's Bomb Baghdad!
3. Background
4. The Events of the Gulf War
5. Omissions, Half-Truths, and Lies about the Gulf War
6. Gulf War Syndrome
7. Experts and World Leaders Oppose a New Attack on Iraq
8. Credits
9. Get Involved
10. About the Bulletin

 
INTRODUCTION: WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN
America is being told by President Bush that an attack on another country is necessary to protect US interests and safety, and to save the world from an evil madman. No, not Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein. Again.

Now that the Bush administration's destruction of Afghanistan has lost steam (and public interest), the President is proposing waging a second Gulf War. Gulf War II would have little to no relation to terrorism or Sept. 11, since there is no evidence of any link between the terrorist attacks and the Iraqi regime (and not for lack of looking).

It makes sense in a hawkish sort of way. After all, the war on Iraq has never really ended. US pilots have been bombing the no-fly zone periodically for years, and the sanctions that have killed a million Iraqis have not been lifted. A new attack would not necessarily be a completely new war. It would be more of an escalation of a conflict that began with the invasion of Kuwait. George W. Bush is even pledging to go one further than his father, and take the battle to Baghdad, the goal being no less than a full regime change (with little concern about what will come after). Gulf War and Son of Gulf War. Just remember that sequels are usually bloodier than the originals.

A sizeable portion of the US public may actually support another war with Iraq, in part because Americans have been subjected to an unceasing barrage of propaganda and rhetoric about the consummate evil of Saddam Hussein for over a decade. This makes it particularly important to bring a more accurate view of the last Gulf War before the public. The picture of an entirely righteous, supremely clean U.S. war effort as touted on CNN needs to be countered with the fuller, unedited story of what actually happened. Many of the war's more sordid details have been exposed since the early 1990s. Attacks on civilian infrastructure and surrendering soldiers have been documented. Thousands of American veterans are still suffering the effects of Gulf War Syndrome, which is controversial and little understood even though over a decade has passed. Facts about the misery caused by UN sanctions are becoming widely known. Some of the major justifications for the original war, including a story about Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators, have been exposed as PR exercises in order to influence the American public. Now that we are being asked to believe in the old rhetoric once again, it is vitally important that we emphasize exactly what was wrong with it in the first place -- or we will be stuck with history repeating itself.

Note: Peace groups are mobilizing across America and around the world to oppose a new Gulf War, and we ask that you also contribute your voice to these efforts. The most important tool that we have is information. Please distribute this bulletin as widely as possible and seek out more information on Iraq and the US, past and present.

 
ONE LINK: WHAT THE HECK, LET'S BOMB BAGHDAD!
There is only the weakest justification for attacking Iraq, and if that justification continues to fall apart, then the Bush administration will finally have to deal with its own domestic problems.

"Hussein is clearly a brutal bully, savage in the repression of his own people, but he does not conform to the madman caricature of U.S. policy. The madman theory does not explain Hussein's ability to survive for decades by never crossing the line that would invite his obliteration. Instead, he is a devious chameleon who was once a U.S. surrogate and defender of the Arab world in the long, bloody war against Iran—-and then turned around and invaded his Arab neighbor Kuwait when, according to some reports, U.S. diplomats led him to understand he could get away with it."
http://peace.moveon.org/r2.php3?r=106

 
BACKGROUND
This is an excellent introduction to the country of Iraq and its political history, up to and including the Gulf War. It explains the British imperialist origins of Iraq and how Saddam Hussein came to power over two decades ago. Includes a map.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/iraq/29099.stm

The US State Department provides a similar fact sheet on Iraq which highlights the strength of Iraq's economy prior to the Iran-Iraq and Gulf Wars.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/6804.htm

The BBC's timeline includes events up to the present.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/737483.stm

 
THE EVENTS OF THE GULF WAR
Prior to the war, the US and Iraq were allies. Iraq was removed from a US list of alleged sponsors of terrorism in 1982. Donald Rumsfeld, who was Washington's envoy to the Middle East at the time, was instrumental in helping reopen relations with Iraq, despite the fact that there was every indication that Iraq was using chemical weapons. During this time the US also approved the sale of a number of military helicopters to Iraq -- helicopters which are believed to have been used to gas the Kurds in 1988.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm

Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. According to Saddam Hussein, it was a response to overproduction of oil in Kuwait (which resulted in Iraq losing $14 million when oil prices fell) as well as long-standing territorial disputes. Hussein also accused Kuwait of illegally pumping oil from Iraq's Rumaila oil field through slant oil drilling. This resulted in UN embargoes and resolutions against Iraq, which in turn helped justify the launching of a US-led attack on Iraq, code-named Desert Storm.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/P/PersG1W1ar.asp

The invasion occurred while about 60% of Kuwaitis were out of the country, during the annual nationwide exodus to escape Kuwait's extreme summer heat. Since the invasion, Kuwaitis have suffered from high rates of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and doctors worry that most of the population was exposed to carcinogenic smoke from burning oil wells. Tragically, 600 people are still missing and are presumed to be prisoners of war, ten years after the conflict began (current to 2000).
http://peace.moveon.org/r2.php3?r=107

Did you know that one of the first acts of US aggression in the Gulf War was US warships firing warnings at Iraqi oil tankers, and that the first Iraqi POWs were captured on an offshore oil rig? Did you know that Hussein's original peace offer was tied to Israel leaving the occupied territories, or that Hussein later called for an Islamic holy war against the States? These and many more interesting facts are included in this chronology of the Gulf War (referred to here as the Kuwait Crisis).
http://peace.moveon.org/r2.php3?r=108

Statistics and a table about Desert Storm demonstrate that the operation's use of air power was not necessarily unprecedented, although it was more successful than past operations.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/desert_storm.htm

The United States suffered 148 killed in action, 458 wounded, 121 killed in nonhostile actions and 11 female combat deaths, while 100,000 - 200,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed. This informative page includes video of President Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan speaking about the war, as well as a list of all of the countries involved.
http://www.cryan.com/war/

A veteran who participated in Desert Storm has posted some of his personal photos and scanned pictures of maps actually used during the war (two pages). Includes images of leaflets dropped on Iraq and a US Patriot missile self-destructing after malfunctioning.
http://gumballproductions.com/desert_storm/index.shtml

US forces massacred Iraqi soldiers who had surrendered and were withdrawing. Soldiers called it a "turkey shoot." The story was broken by the same Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who uncovered the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
http://peace.moveon.org/r2.php3?r=109

A gruesome picture of an incinerated soldier killed during the infamous "turkey shoot" accompanies this brief summary of the events that occurred on what is now referred to as the "Highway of Death."
http://peace.moveon.org/r2.php3?r=110

Attacks on Iraq have occurred periodically since the "end" of the Gulf War. Perhaps the most well-known example of this is Desert Fox, which was the codename for a series of US airstrikes on Iraq which occurred while President Clinton was caught up in the Lewinsky scandal.
http://www.leyden.com/gulfwar/unscom.html

The Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace maintains a site that lists every incident of US bombing of Iraq. There are over twenty entries for this year alone. This page is highly recommended -- it's an eye opener.
http://www.ccmep.org/us_bombing_watch.html

As the Houston Peace and Justice Center states: "The Gulf War—-the UN military campaign that quickly forced Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait—- ended in 1991. The war against Iraq has never ended. It has proceeded on two fronts-—economic sanctions and the maintenance of U.S. and British 'no-fly zones' covering much of Iraqi territory." This is an overview of the effects of this continuing war on Iraq.
http://www.hpjc.org/issues/waroniraq.htm

 
OMISSIONS, HALF-TRUTHS, AND LIES ABOUT THE GULF WAR
In the decade since the Gulf War, it has come to light that many of the justifications for the war were not completely true, and sometimes even intentionally fabricated in order to sway public opinion. Allegations of military whitewashing of grisly incidents have also gained public attention.

One of the most notorious examples of the lies that were used to sell the Gulf War was the false allegation that Iraqi soldiers removed Kuwaiti babies from incubators and left them to die. Prior to the Gulf War, this lie was widely circulated, and was specifically cited by several senators in their speeches supporting the resolution to give President Bush (Sr.) the right to attack Iraq. However, since the war, it has come to light that the testimony given on the issue was, in fact, false.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/03/117426.php

Part I of "Selling the Gulf War" is an article which explains the deep divisions in public opinion prior to the Gulf War and how PR played a central role in creating support for the war. The major difficulty was that Kuwait was controlled by an extremely rich elite that treated the populace badly, and, if this were widely known, it was doubtful that the American public would support the risk and expense of sending troops.
http://www.io.com/~patrik/gulfwar1.htm

Part II of "Selling the Gulf War" specifically mentions the baby-killing story. The story was masterminded by a public relations firm.
http://www.io.com/~patrik/gulfwar2.htm

Such intentional management of public perception is part of a new government approach to conflict that has been employed since public opinion turned against the Vietnam War. US incursions in the Gulf, Panama and Grenada have all been accompanied by restrictions and manipulation of the media meant to build and maintain support for these conflicts. Some facts specifically pertaining to the Gulf War that are mentioned here include the comparatively small numbers of the much-promoted "smart" bombs that were used (only 8.8%), the inflated success rates of bombing missions, the undisclosed failure rates of Patriot missiles, and the unwillingness of the US government to highlight or admit to the long-term damage to the civilian population after civilian infrastructure was bombed.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11606

This brief article from AlterNet highlights some more of the lies which were commonly reported during the Gulf War, along with some pointers about how to assess the information that the media passes along to you.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11668

Aside from manufactured stories, media ommisions also helped frame public opinion both prior to and since the Gulf War. In this article about media censorship in the US, John Pilger writes:

"[After the Gulf War] ...[t]he famous CBS anchorman Dan Rather told his prime-time audience: 'There's one thing we can all agree on. It's the heroism of the 148 Americans who gave their lives so that freedom could live.' What he omitted to say was that a quarter of them had been killed, like their British comrades, by other Americans. He made no mention of the Iraqi dead, put at 200,000 by the Medical Educational Trust. That American forces had deliberately bombed civilian infrastructure, such as water treatment plants, was not reported at the time. Six months later, one newspaper, Newsday, published in Long Island, New York, disclosed that three US brigades 'used snow plows mounted on tanks to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers - some still alive - in more than 70 miles of trenches'.

The other day, both the Washington Post and the New York Times referred to Iraq without mentioning the million people now estimated to have died as a direct result of sanctions imposed, via the UN, by the United States and Britain. That, writes Brian Michael Goss of the University of Illinois, is standard practice. Goss examined 630 articles on sanctions published in the New York Times from 1996 to 1998. In those three years, just 20 articles -- 3 per cent of the coverage -- were critical of the policy or dwelt upon its civilian impact. The rest reflected the US official line, identifying 21 million people with Saddam Hussein. The scale of the censorship is placed in perspective by Professors John and Karl Mueller, of the University of Rochester. 'Even if the UN estimates of the human damage to Iraq are roughly correct,' they write, sanctions have caused 'the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history.'"
http://peace.moveon.org/r2.php3?r=111

In 1999, the New York Times broke the story that US officials had participated in UN weapons inspections teams in Iraq in order to spy on Saddam Hussein. The article anticipated that these facts would damage the reputation of the weapons inspection system to the point that it would not survive. Currently, an attack is being justified on the basis of Iraq's refusal to allow weapons inspections, and it seems that mainstream media has conveniently forgotten this information.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13731

It is an oft-reported "fact" that Saddam Hussein expelled the UN weapons inspections team that left Iraq in 1998 -- however, in truth, the team left voluntarily on the grounds that Iraqi non-cooperation made their job impossible. Despite having to repeatedly issue corrections, various US newspapers continue to make this mistake. The author also notes the curious lack of mention of the use of the inspections teams for intelligence gathering which is highlighted in the previous link.
http://peace.moveon.org/r2.php3?r=112

There are many who feel that the US intentionally aggravated the Iraq/Kuwait conflict in order to provide a pretext for an attack, and possibly even encouraged Iraq to attack by giving the false impression that the US would not retaliate. This article summarizes some of the information that points to how and why the US government might have done so.
http://www.deoxy.org/wc/wc-consp.htm

 
GULF WAR SYNDROME
Veterans returning from the Gulf have experienced a variety of health problems, collectively referred to as Gulf War Syndrome. This is a brief encyclopedia entry on the subject.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/G/GulfW1rsyn.asp

Gulf War Syndrome may be related to the use of depleted uranium weapons (DU), the hazards of which we have mentioned in a previous bulletin. Some 3 out of 4 servicemen and women may have come into contact with DU during the Gulf War.
http://www.miltoxproj.org/DU/dupd.htm

Probably one of the best guides on Gulf War Syndrome is this one, provided by the National Gulf War Resource Center. If you have the time, you may want to read through the entire thing, which explains the possible relation of veterans' illnesses to chemicals, weapons, pollutants, and diseases which were present in the Gulf War environment. According to the guide, 110,000 American Gulf War veterans have reported health problems since their service.
http://www.ngwrc.org/shg/page2.html

 
EXPERTS AND WORLD LEADERS OPPOSE A NEW ATTACK ON IRAQ
The US National Security Adviser during the Gulf War has warned President Bush that invading Iraq would cause an “explosion” in the Middle East and consign the United States to defeat in its "war on terrorism."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-374710,00.html

"According to Scott Ritter, who spent seven years in Iraq with the UNSCOM weapons inspection teams performing detailed investigations into Iraq's weapons program...Iraq simply does not have weapons of mass destruction or maintain threatening ties to international terrorism. Therefore, no premise for a war in Iraq exists. Considering the American military lives and the Iraqi civilian lives that will be spent in such an endeavor, not to mention the deadly regional destabilization that will ensue, such a baseless war must be avoided at all costs."
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13710

A Senate Foreign Relations Committee is currently reviewing a possible attack on Iraq, and could possibly open some real debate about whether such an attack is wise or whether it is "stupid, illegal, costly in American and Iraqi lives, and enormously counter-productive in terms of Middle Eastern politics," as the US's allies have indicated.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0801-04.htm

Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, has warned against any military assault on Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein while violence continues to rage between Israel and the Palestinians.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0806-02.htm

Germany's chancellor is staking his re-election on the issue of an attack on Iraq, telling Germans that a vote for him is a vote against joining a US-led war effort there.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0805-08.htm

Testimony at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee is highlighting how dangerous and complicated an attack on Iraq would actually be. There is little consensus among top officials how to pull it off, and what to do once it's over.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13804

According to this law professor, Americans will be surprised at how many dangerous consequences could arise because of a new Gulf War, not the least of which is extensive civilian casualties. "If a bomb falls in another country and no American hears it, does it make any noise? Yes. It kills people, too. The Gulf War killed so many people that many Arabs call it 'The Gulf Massacre.' "
http://www.counterpunch.org/foley0812.html

 
CREDITS
Research this issue:

Joanne Comito
Fabio Fioriani
Mary Kim
Vicki Nikolaidis
Ben Spencer
special thanks to Sharon Winn

Proofreading team:

David Taub Bancroft
Madlyn Bynum
Carol Brewster
Nancy Evans
Mary Kim
Vicki Nikolaidis
Alfred K. Weber

 
GET INVOLVED
We're always looking for people who can devote a few hours a week to volunteering, especially for doing online research. If you're interested in helping out, please send us a note at [email protected] that gives us a sense of who you are and why you're interested.

If you would like us to include an action, news article, or source for more information in the bulletin, please write to [email protected] and describe your item in the subject line.

 
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