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[Previous entry: "The German government"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "CounterPunch & Christopher Hitchens"] 24 February 2003: "Elson Boles in CounterPunch"
Out of Bounds Magazine (whatever it is, since it has no online presence that Google can discern) may describe CounterPunch as "America's best political newsletter" but if contributors like Elson E. Boles are indicative of its content, one can only hope Out of Bounds is wrong. For otherwise, the state of political thought in the United States is in lamentable condition. "The US not only helped arm Iraq with military equipment right up to the time of the Kuwait invasion in 1989, as did Germany, Britain, France, Russia and others, but also sold and helped Iraq to integrate chemical weapons into their US-provided battle plans while fighting Iran between 1985-1988."Curiously, for the rest of the article, Boles skates over the French and Soviet contributions to Iraq's war effort against Iran, and at no point cites any references which provide actual proof of the sales of chemical weapons by the US to Iraq during the war. The primary source for Boles' allegations that the US "helped Iraq to integrate chemical weapons into their US-provided battle plans" is an article from the New York Times (no longer available on its own site—at least, not for free—but still available from the Seattle Times), "Officers say U.S. ignored Iraq's use of gas against Iran" by Patrick. E. Tyler. Boles doesn't directly quote the actual article much—indeed, he even fails to identify the title and author—and the reason why he does not soon becomes apparent: "It has long been known the United States provided intelligence assistance to Iraq in the form of satellite photography to help the Iraqis understand how Iranian forces were deployed. But the full nature of the program, as described by former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officers who mostly spoke on condition of anonymity, was not previously disclosed.So a group of anonymous ex-spooks (not the most readily verifiable source for any story) claimed that the DIA covertly provided the Iraqi government with battle plans, but also state that they only found out the Iraqis were adding chemical weapons to the plans afterward. Thus, Boles' primary reference to support his claim actually contradicts said claim. Boles' only quote from the Tyler article is a statement by former defence intelligence officer Col. Walter Lang: "DIA and CIA officials 'were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose' to Iran. 'The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern,' he said."Contradicting Boles' claim that the US was Iraq's ally is the next line, which Boles does not quote: "What Reagan's top aides were concerned about, he said, was that the Iranians not spread the Islamic revolution." Boles, in a classic "accent" fallacy, shifts Lang's statement that "US intelligence wanted to make sure Iraq did not lose to Iran" to "US intelligence wanted to make sure Iraq did not lose to Iran" Even more telling is that Boles also omits to mention Lang's subsequent statement: "Lang said the DIA 'would have never accepted the use of chemical weapons against civilians, but the use against military objectives was seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival.'"The main premise of Boles' article is to illustrate the hypocrisy (aside: yes, that is the correct spelling) of the Bush administration's argument that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians, most notably at Halabja in March 1988. That last quote, certainly in combination with the anonymous sources' denial that the DIA was involved in planning the Halabja attack, rather undermines that whole premise. Bolstering his "accent" fallacy, Boles spends the following paragraphs building up a picture of "Iraqgate." "A major break in uncovering Iraqgate began with a riveting 1990 Nightline episode which revealed that top officials of the Reagan administration, the State Department, the Pentagon, C.I.A., and D.I.A., collectively engaged in a massive cover up of the USS Vincennes' whereabouts and actions when it shot down an Iranian airliner in 1987 killing over 200 civilians. The 'massive cover up' Koppel explained, was designed to hide the US secret war against Iran, in which, among other actions, US Special Operations troops and Navy SEALS sunk half of Iran's navy while giving battle plans and logistical information to Iraqi ground forces in a coordinated offensive."Somehow, the 1985-1988 "Tanker War" just passed Boles by, didn't it? During this period, both Iran and Iraq were trying to to disrupt each other's oil-exporting capability by terrorising, damaging or sinking each other's tankers. Iran took it a step further by going after any vessel, regardless of flag flown, leaving Kuwait City, Al-Khafji or Dhahran, since Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were funding the Iraqi war effort (they were scared of Khomeini as well). The Iranian weapons of choice in this offensive were were Chinese-built HY-2 SILKWORM missiles, mines laid in international waters, and some 40 Boghammer PBIs ("Patrol Boat, Interception" or "Inshore" - basically a cigarette boat with a bunch of heavily armed guys on board), built by Boghammer Marin AB, a Swedish shipbuilding firm, and officially sold to the Iranian "Coast Guard." The impact of these boats—actually operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, aka the Pasdaran—was such that the US DoD still uses the term "Boghammer threat" to describe the threat posed to surface vessels by multiple small, fast (the Boghammer can do 46 knots) and agile craft, and a major selling point of the new Oerlikon 35mm "Millennium" naval gun is its (claimed) 95% kill rate against (specifically) a Boghammer PBI at 2500 metres. In response, the US Navy launched Operation Earnest Will, the purpose of which was to protect shipping in the international waters of the Persian (or Arabian, depending on whom you talk to) Gulf. Covert operations were undertaken in this context (see for example "Joint special operations in support of Earnest Will" in the Autumn/Winter 2001/2002 issue of Joint Force Quarterly; as the article also mentions, the destruction of half the Iranian fleet took place in April 1988, in an operation codenamed Preying Mantis) but Earnest Will itself was public knowledge at the time (to the extent that according to Time magazine, a 1987 opinion poll found that 68% of respondents expected a "military exchange" between the U.S. and Iran, and 60% were in favor of stronger retaliatory action against the Iranians). The fact that Earnest Will inflicted an apparently disproportionate amount of damage on the Iranian forces was because Iranian forces posed a greater threat to neutral shipping. I remember standing in the schoolyard at the start of the 1988-89 school year, joking that the Vincennes' much-touted IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) system must have consisted of one naval rating hanging out of a window with a pair of Vaseline-smeared opera glasses. So you'll understand my response to the term "cover-up" regarding the shooting down of Iran Air flight 655 is "What cover-up?" Another curious feature is that, contrary to Boles' assertion, the downing of Iran Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes took place in 1988. FAS actually has the statement made in response to the Nightline piece, "Crowe Refutes ABC/Newsweek Charges on Vincennes." Likely, Boles is again indulging his penchant in selectively quoting mainstream media sources, drawing false conclusions from those selective quotes, and attributing them to his source. Since the Nightline episode he refers to actually aired in 1992, one must consider the possibility that Boles never watched it himself (claims of it being "riveting" to the contrary), but relies on the article "Iraqgate" by Russ Baker, published in 1993 in the Columbia Journalism Review. Likely, however, he does not even rely on that, since Baker's article contains substantially more evidence on "Iraqgate" than Boles presents; more plausible is that Boles' piece is derivative of an earlier article which was, in turn, derivative of Baker's article. Perhaps there are even more steps in between; given all the inaccuracies in Boles' piece, the only thing that can be said for certain is that he did not bother doing any research himself. (At this point, it occurred to me that that Boles may never have never laid eyes on the New York times article he "quotes," either.) This is further illustrated by a later paragraph: "A PBS Frontline episode, 'The Arming of Iraq' (1990) detailed much of the conventional and so-called "dual-use" weapons sold to Iraq. The public learned from other sources that at least since mid-1980s the US was selling chemical and biological material for weapons to Iraq and orchestrating private sales. These sales began soon after current Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad in 1985 and met with Saddam Hussein as a private businessman on behalf of the Reagan administration."For a change, he's got the year of the programme right (in what some may take as a stunning and uncanny coincidence, "The Arming of Iraq" aired on 11-Sep-1990); however, since Donald Rumsfeld is the Secretary of Defense, and he visited Iraq in 1983, we can only assume that Boles is up to his now familiar shoddy practices (does this man even read the newspaper?). Actually, on the website of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, I found something titled SIPRI FACT SHEET Chemical Weapons I, dated May 1984; going over events at the time, this fact sheet reveals the following chronology of events: (19-Dec-1983 - Rumsfeld visits Iraq, ostensibly to "discuss issues of mutual interest")So, as we see, the US and UK governments actually imposed export restrictions on CW agent precursors very swiftly; admittedly, it should be noted that the "foreign policy controls" did not cover the precursors for the production of VX nerve gas, but in response it should be pointed out that VX had at that time not been used by either side. So what about bioweapons? Well, as this AP article reports, the CDC and a private company, the American Type Culture Collection, received requests during the 1980s from, among others, the University of Baghdad and Basra University for various culture samples. These included anthrax, West Nile Virus, and various strains of bacteria which cause botulinum and gas gangrene. The requests claimed that these samples were required for legitimate medical research purposes, and their export was accordingly approved under a programme administered by the US Department of Commerce. In the 1990s, UNSCOM weapons inspectors discovered that the culture samples had gone straight into the Iraqi bioweapons programme; the US Senate Banking Committee was made aware of this. Jonathan Tucker, an UNSCOM bioweapons inspector, had the following to say on the issue: "I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs. But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time."Naive? In hindsight, perhaps. I'd be more inclined to think that when the export regulations were drawn up, nobody considered the possibility that some day a country would request culture samples under false pretences for the production of bioweapons. Moreover, it should be noted that—contrary to Boles' claim—there is no firm indication that Iraq never actually used the pathogens acquired in this manner, either on the battlefield or elsewhere. Actually, Boles' ignorance is evident from his use of the term "'dual-use' weapons"; "dual-use" means that the materials in question may be employed for warlike purposes and non-warlike purposes alike. By definition, there is no such thing as a "dual-use weapon" - a weapon has one use. Boles again: "To top it all off, there is the question as to whether Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was a set up. Evidence indicates that the US knew of Iraq's plans—after all, the military and intelligence agencies of the two countries were working very closely. Newspaper reports about the infamous meeting between then-Ambassador Glaspie and Iraq officials, and a special ABC report in the series 'A Line in the Sand,' indicated that, although the US officials told Iraq that it disapproved, they indicated that the US would not interfere." Boles avoids answering his own question, for the predictable reason that the answer is "no." With the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, Iran rapidly became less of a threat than it had been, and Saddam became a liability; the administration of president G.H.W. Bush realised this. Accordingly, the "FY 1992-1997 Defense Planning Guidance," published 24-Jan-1990, directed Central Command—CENTCOM—to shift the focus of its planning away from the threat of a Soviet incursion into the Gulf region (and Iran in particular) and towards the threat of an invasion of the Arabian peninsula (and especially the capture of the oil fields) by another country in the region (source: Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, both of 07-Feb-1990). It is no stretch of the imagination to assume which country was meant by this (hint: it wasn't Jordan). On 08-Feb-1990, General Norman Schwartzkopf, head of CENTCOM and still relatively unknown at the time, testified before the Senate Armed Forces Committee that CENTCOM had been issued these instructions; he also testified that Iraq had been acquiring a large amount of Soviet AFVs, artillery pieces etc., which had become surplus to Soviet Army requirements following the withdrawal from Eastern Europe. Why should Iraq acquire all this hardware if not to put it to use? By July 1990, Iraq and Kuwait were embroiled in a dispute concerning the islands of Warbah and Bubiyan (see this map). The Shatt al-Arab waterway had become unnavigable during the Iran-Iraq War, due to large amounts of unexploded ordnance and lack of dredging. Moreover, the eastern shore was Iranian territory. Thus, Iraq's only option for secure access to the Arabian Gulf was the Khawr Abd'Allah waterway, leading to the Iraqi deep-water port of Umm Qasr. In order to secure this waterway, Iraq demanded Kuwait lease it the islands of Warbah and Bubiyan, arguing that Iraq was owed some recompense for fighting the Iranians on behalf of the Arab world; Kuwait pointed out it had loaned Iraq some $13bn to finance the war, which the Iraqis had made no sign of intending to repay. The oft-quoted line spoken by Ambassador Glaspie to Saddam Hussein is the following: "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."This is frequently torn out of context to illustrate that the US government implicitly signalled that it would not take sides if Iraq invaded Kuwait. But the operative phrase is out of context. The full version of Ambassador Glaspie's words may be found here, but I will quote a few salient points: "I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.Emphasis in bold mine. The latter paragraph, while couched in diplomatic terms, can only be interpreted as "you appear to be planning to go to war, and that worries us." In combination with the aforementioned orders to CENTCOM, it is untenable to assert that the US government gave its approval, not even tacitly, to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently released a report titled A Wiser Peace: An action strategy for a post-conflict Iraq; it mentions that Iraq currently has a foreign debt of over $100bn —yes, feel free to do the "one hundred billion dollars" thing à la Dr. Evil—of which most (approx. $80bn) is owed to the Russian Federation for, among other things, weapons purchased from its predecessor, the Soviet Union (the balance being owed primarily to France, which supplied such items as Mirage and Super Étandard fighter aircraft and AM.39 Exocet missiles). The US's role in arming Iraq is best summed up in the words of Saddam Hussein himself in his interview with Ambassador Glaspie in July 1990: "There is nothing left for us to buy from America. Only wheat. Because every time we want to buy something, they say it is forbidden. I am afraid that one day you will say, 'You are going to make gunpowder out of wheat.'"We may conclude that the US did not play the largest part in unleashing and fostering the genie that is Saddam Hussein, but that it has done more than any other country to put the cork back in the bottle. Whatever legitimate doubt may exist—and exist it does—as to the current administration's motives, Boles does not touch upon any of it. Elson E. Boles' article is shoddily written, even more shoddily researched, and blatantly pursues an agenda with little regard for facts or the standards of scientific practice as concerns research. He obfuscates, distorts and misrepresents facts at almost every turn, provided he can be bothered to get them straight in the first place. The fact that Boles has the audacity to list this piece of intellectual dishonesty as a publication on his curriculum vitae serves to indicate that if one plans to study sociology, one is well-advised to avoid Saginaw Valley State University. The fact that CounterPunch actually published it—without even correcting the obvious errors—does not speak well for that magazine either. As the blurbs say, "CounterPunch gives you the facts you won't find anywhere else!" Draw your own conclusions why these "facts" aren't found anywhere else. A special "shame on you!" is reserved for Mark Morford of SFGate, who used Boles' piece unquestioningly as a reference in his column "Everybody Loves A War Thug" I'm sure there was a time when journalists and editors alike actually checked their sources, but if CounterPunch and SFGate are anything to go by, those days are long gone. |
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