Introduction

The Gulf War of 1991 was presented as a war for democracy - a war for the liberation of Kuwait, and to oppose the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. Iraq was presented as well armed, ruthless, and a threat to peace and democracy throughout the Middle East, and indeed the entire world.

Far from being a war of liberation, the Gulf War was a Zionist project, from the beginning to the end. In order to throw Iraq "back to the Stone Ages", as Israeli Knesset-spokesman Pazner threatened just before the outbreak of fighting, the Zionists needed legitimacy for the war that required the criminalisation of Iraq. Iraq had to be set up as the menace to peace and democracy. Saddam Hussein was "the new Hitler", and Iraqs annexation of Kuwait "the beginning of an Iraqi blitzkrieg".

In order to mobilize the West to do the "dirty job" of disabling, crippling and annihilating Iraqs economic, social and political potential, Zionist infiltrators in the West were activated. Through political channels, through Jewish ownership and influence in Western medias, the Zionists launched a campaign of propaganda directed aginst Iraq. The aim was to get "popular support" for the coming atrocities that were being planned against the Iraqi people, and which only could be undertaken if the Western public had been enough "prepared", i e brainwashed.

The leading Israeli newspaper Ha´aretz wrote in January 13, 1991: "The Jewish lobbyists in the USA are deeply involved in the propaganda work promoting a war against Iraq."

The scare stories, panics, and propaganda used to smear Iraq in most cases rest on little or no evidence. For instance, it was simply not true that Iraq possessed, or was about to get hold of, nuclear weapons. Inspection teams from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have never found a nuclear bomb, or evidence that one exists. Despite the large sums of money that Iraq spent on nuclear research, it was still many years away from producing even one small atomic weapon, and independent studies of Iraq's nuclear facilities point out that most assumptions of their future nuclear plans are improbably optimistic, based on the progress of America's Manhattan Project during World War 2, rather than the experience of a third world country, that has had to import most of it's technology from the West.(1)

However, facts did not prevent newspapers like the Sunday Times presenting a series of contradictory 'exclusives' claiming to reveal the hidden truth about Iraq's weapons. On the 28 November 1990 they headlined a story "Iraq may have a nuclear capacity in two months"(2). Three weeks later a front page article informed us "Iraq is Two Years away from Nuclear Bomb"(3). A curt dismissal of their previous projection was buried at the bottom of the article.

The tales of Saddam's nuclear arsenal came from American military intelligence reports, written for public consumption. As the Sunday Times itself freely admitted, an opinion poll conducted in America showed that only 31% of those interviewed would support a war to defend US interests in the region such as oil, but a majority thought the war would be justified to prevent Iraq getting the bomb.(4) From then on the nuclear, chemical, and military threat posed by Iraq became the No. 1 story of the Gulf War.

Despite the this lack of evidence there was very little or no criticism of the claims against Iraq. The journalists all knew that prostitution for the cause of Zionism is a lucrative one, whereas the opposite is not. Thus, however bizarre and contradictory these propaganda stories about Iraq became, people were prepared to believe anything.

Even the critics of government policy accept the moral parameters set. In Britain, the Scott Inquiry is investigating government ministers at the highest levels for illicit arms sales to Iraq before the Gulf War. Yet all commentators, however critical, see the selling of arms to Iraq as the central problem, not Britains own arsenal, which it readily used during the Gulf War. Ministers are criticised for lying to Parliament, but not for bombing Iraq back to a pre-industrial age.

The need to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction became a central argument in the demonising of Iraq and justifying the Gulf War. Yet accepting the obsession with proliferation obscures who is really to blame for conflict and destruction in the Middle East. It is Israel that has the real arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction", and the ruthlessness to use them. The latest reports say that the Jewish state possesses a nuclear arsenal of some 200 bombs, together with the latest missile systems needed to launch them. Hydrogen and neutron bombs are also included in this Jewish cocktail of mass destruction.

The Zionist's henchmen, doing Israelis job during the Gulf War, didn't hesitate to use the most horrific weapons against the Iraqi nation.

Radioactive 'nuclear bullets', made with waste uranium from the nuclear industry, were used during the Gulf War. They have contaminated Iraq's soil and water table with toxic and carcinogenic dust that will last 4,500 million years. The dust released from these uranium tipped shells as they explode causes genetic damage and has been linked to the rise in childhood cancers in Iraq since the Gulf War. The population of Iraq has never been informed of the hazard, nor offered compensation or measures to protect themselves.

In recent months the leaders of the "New World Order" has made clear it is prepared to drop the bomb on North Korea. As in the case of Iraq, the obsession with the possibility of North Korea developing a nuclear capability ignores both the massive nuclear arsenal possessed by the USA (the only country to have used the bomb), and Bill Clinton's threat to 'annihilate' North Korea with very real nuclear weapons (5).

Having criminalized Iraq through the scare stories of proliferation, the Zionists gained the moral authority to destroy it. Whilst Iraq was accused of a nonexistent nuclear arsenal, the Zionist directed "Allied" forces were using weapons such as cluster bombs, napalm, fuel air explosives, and depleted uranium in addition to it's awesome conventional firepower.

Depleted Uranium

Depleted uranium is a low level radioactive heavy metal. It is the waste left from the enrichment process whereby the fissionable uranium-235 isotope is concentrated for nuclear weapons or reactor fuel. The non-fissionable uranium-238 isotope (depleted uranium) is left.

The development of DU weapons by the US military began in the 1970's(6), with Britain starting test firing of DU weapons in 1980(7). The most important quality of DU is it's extreme density. DU is two and a half to three times as heavy as steel. This density allows DU missiles to travel a 40-kilometre range at a velocity of 1500 meters per second - four times speed of conventional large-calibre shells.

A DU projectile provides maximum penetrative power because it can concentrate phenomenal weight on a single point. It's armour piercing capacity is spectacular. US A10 'tankbuster' pilots who fired DU missiles on Iraqi tanks during the Gulf War called it 'plinking' - slang for shooting tin cans. DU is also pyrophoric - small particles of DU burn spontaneously in oxygen. On impact with a tank or armoured vehicle a DU shell fragments and ignites, enhancing it's destructive power - it sets the ammunition and fuel on fire burning tank crews alive.

An additional attraction of DU is it's cheapness. The stockpiles of DU built up by the nuclear industry provide cheap material for munitions production, whilst sparing the nuclear industry the headache and expense of long-term storage. Instead they are able to dump their nuclear waste on a third world country.

The Gulf War of 1991 was the first opportunity that the US and British forces had to test their DU weapons in combat conditions. How much depleted uranium was used may never be known but it has been estimated that the Allies fired between 5,000 - 6,000 DU tank rounds(8) and 940,000 bullets from aircraft such as the A10(9).

However, even more worrying than the immediate destructive effects of DU weapons, is the long-term health risks associated with DU and it's use in munitions.

Pyrophoric explosions create microscopic airborne particles which can spread across kilometre-wide areas. They are sufficiently soluble to contaminate soil, groundwater and surface water. These microscopic, radioactive heavy metal particles (DU and daughter products like beryllium) can enter the body through ingestion and inhalation. When ingested DU accumulates in the bones and kidneys and like lead is permanently deposited. It causes irreversible damage to the kidneys and the growth of tumours. DU crosses the placenta during pregnancy - children are particularly vulnerable to it's toxic effects because their cells are dividing rapidly as they grow.

When inhaled DU can also enter the body through the lungs. Some of these particles will be trapped there permanently and increase the risk of cancer. Others will settle in the bones and the bloodstream with the results mentioned above.

The toxic affects of DU are challenged by the military authorities, but in May 1991 the US Defence Department admitted that the military use of DU results in "...the potential to cause adverse impacts on human health, primarily through the water pathway."(10)

A secret report by Britain's Atomic Energy Authority, revealed by The Independent, estimated that the Allies had left at least 40 tonnes of DU, enough to cause "500,000 potential deaths", and that the sheer volume of DU left in Kuwait and Iraq "indicates a significant problem" (11). Other researchers have estimated that up to 300 tonnes of depleted uranium weapons may have been left on the battlefields.

The military refuse to classify DU as a 'radiological weapon' (12), claiming it is only slightly radioactive. Nevertheless, when Siegwart Gunther, medical director of the Albert Scheitzer Institute arrived in Berlin in July 1992, carrying a spent DU round retrieved from Iraq, he was charged with illegally "releasing ionising radiation". The shell, it's radioactivity confirmed by two independent German laboratories, was quickly sealed in a lead-lined box. There are few lead lined boxes in Iraq. Recent reports from aid workers and doctors working in Iraq have spoken of many new illnesses amongst children in Iraq. UN personnel and aid workers have seen children playing with empty shells and destroyed tanks in the former battlefields. These weapons have been linked to the rise in childhood cancers in these areas.(13)

During the Gulf War Allied tank crews were exposed to radiation the equivalent of a daily chest x-ray. This dosage is permissible, but not desirable, under current radiological health standards for civilians (14). The use, handling, and clearup of DU munitions has also been linked to the occurrence of 'Gulf War Syndrome', a mysterious illness, mostly affecting the immune system of which former soldiers who served in the Gulf have complained.(15)

Because their moral authority remains unchallenged, the West have been able to re-define DU as conventional weaponry, when by any criteria it is a chemical weapon, and arguably a low - level nuclear one.

Napalm

There is no evidence that Iraq ever used chemical weapons during the Gulf War. Indeed, some Russian missile experts disputed whether chemical warheads could be fitted to the Scud-B missiles without seriously de-stabilising them.(16) Even the alleged gas attacks in the Southern Marshes, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, have been disproved by UN inspectors(17). However, Iraq's reluctance to use chemical weapons was not matched by the Allies. As well as the chemical and biological aftermath of DU - described as "The Agent Orange of the 1990's"(18) - the West was also using napalm.

Napalm is a sticky and highly combustible material which, when dropped in a bomb, disperses over a large area igniting anything in it's path. The Pentagon claimed it was only used to burn off oil in Iraqi defensive trenches. However The Washington Post reported it was used to reach 'entrenched troops'(19) and a US marine officer was quoted as saying "napalm was being used against Iraqi troops as it was against the enemy in Vietnam"(20).

Fuel Air Explosives

Bombs containing fuel air explosives release a cloud of fuel vapours on impact which mix with air and detonate, causing a high pressure blast. A CIA report claimed that "the pressure effects of FAE's approach those produced by low-yield nuclear weapons at short ranges"(21) The Washington Post reported that the US had used BLU-82 bombs against Iraqi front line troops(22). These FAE bombs give an overpressure of 1,000 psi; humans can endure 40 psi. It was also reported that at least 11 of these bombs were used between 7 February 1991 and the commencement of ground hostilities.(23)

Cluster Bombs

Cluster bombs break up into hundreds of bomblets which spread out shrapnel to maximise human injury and damage to machinery. Their use is "illegal under international law even for use against troops"(24). They were used mainly against civilian traffic, in the search for mobile Scud missile launchers, none of which were ever found. It is estimated that 60 - 80,000 cluster bombs were dropped during the conflict(25). They were used on the notorious 'Highway of Death' - the road from Kuwait to Basra in southern Iraq where a 7 mile long convoy of fleeing soldiers, civilians, and foreign workers were mercilessly bombed by allied forces. The US army estimated that 25,000 died in these highway attacks.(26)

Attacks on Civilian Targets

The Zionist propagandists presented the Gulf War as a ´clean war´ which avoided civilian casualties, and damage. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Much was made of the allies use of 'smart' bombs - weapons guided to their targets by radar, electro-optics, or laser systems. Allied media briefings tended to highlight the use of 'smart' weapons to give the impression of a war where the bombs almost invariably hit their intended military targets with little civilian collateral damage. It was not until after the war that the USAF revealed that 'smart' bombs made up only 8.8% of the munitions dropped.(27)

Far from these bombs being dropped on exclusively military targets, many civilian targets were attacked as well. A daytime air attack on a bridge in Nasiriya, southern Iraq, killed at least 100 civilians(28). On 14 February 1991 a 'smart' bomb attack by the RAF on a bridge in Falluja missed completely, hitting a market 1km from the bridge and killing over 200 civilians(29). A similar attack on a bridge in Samawa killed over 100 civilians.(30)

The entire city of Basra, Iraq's second largest with a population of 800,000 was declared a target by the Allies, despite the Geneva Convention prohibiting area bombing in cities. On 12 February 1991 the Pentagon were claiming there were no civilians left in the city, and that it contained only military targets(31). Nevertheless, reports of hundreds of civilian casualties in and around Basra have emerged since the war.(32)

Perhaps the best known attack on a civilian target was the bombing of the al-Amariyah air raid shelter in western Baghdad, at 4.30 am on February 13 1991. The number of civilians killed varies from the Iraqi governments 300-400, to the Gulf Peace Team's 1,500 (33). The allies claimed the shelter was a 'command and control centre'(34) or a 'leadership bunker'(35). However, it had been built as a civilian installation in 1984, and had been in civilian use for at least 2 weeks prior to the attack.(36)

Conventional Weapons

The West didn't need to use it's nuclear arsenal to destroy Iraq. Approximately 89,000 tonnes of conventional ordnance was dropped by Allied forces during Desert Storm, with a further 20 - 30,000 tons of explosives launched by Allied warships(37), killing as many people as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Shortly after the war, a retired Israeli General wrote "The Iraqi Army was not an unknown quantity. After 8 years of war with Iran it was very clear that it was not a threatening army, it was not a first-class fighting force"(38). Far from being 'the world's fourth largest army' as it had been frequently described in the West, the Iraqi army turned out to be an army of conscripts who during the Gulf War never mustered a single offensive strike, or any effective defensive action. The Iraqi air force never engaged with Western forces - over 20% flew to Iran and never returned. Nor were the anti-aircraft defences of any use. In sharp contrast to the Vietnam war, not one B-52 bomber was lost in combat. Allied aircraft loses were lower than the normal combat training rate(39). Between 100,000 - 120,000 Iraqi's were killed during the war, compared to the 147 Western casualties. Western troops reoccupied Kuwait in a ground engagement lasting less than 100 hours(40). Within 3 months of the war the death toll was between 144,000 and 181,000(41). The infant mortality rate in Iraq has tripled since the Gulf War, and life expectancy in Iraq has reduced from 68 to 47 since the war.(42).

References

1. D. Albright & M. Hibbs, Iraq's Bomb: Blueprints and Artifacts, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1992, pp30.

2. Sunday Times, 25 November 1990

3. Sunday Times, 16 December 1990

4. Sunday Times, 16 December 1990

5. Living Marxism No. 70 p4.

6. G Bukowski, D A Lopez & F M McGehee, Uranium Battlefields Home and Abroad: depleted Uranium Use by US Department of Defense, p16

7. I Doucet "depleted Uranium, sick soldiers and dead children?", Global Security, Winter 1993, p10

8. G Bukowski, D A Lopez & F M McGehee, Uranium Battlefields Home and Abroad: depleted Uranium Use by US Department of Defense, p6.

9. I Doucet "depleted Uranium, sick soldiers and dead children?", Global Security, Winter 1993, p10

10. I Doucet "depleted Uranium, sick soldiers and dead children?", Global Security, Winter 1993, p10

11. Nick Cohen, "Radioactive waste left in Gulf by Allies", The Independent, 10 November 1991.

12. Dr. Eric Hoskins, "Making the desert Glow",New York Times , 21 January 1993.

13. Dr. Eric Hoskins, "Making the desert Glow",New York Times , 21 January 1993.

14. James Ridgeway, "Using Nuclear Bullets", Village Voice, 15 January 1991.

15. Soraya S Nelson, "Radiation, Storm illness link alleged" Army Times, 12 October 1992.

16. Associated Press, "Iraq - Chemical Weapons", 12 November 1991 ( quoted in D. Albright & M. Hibbs, Iraq's Bomb: Blueprints and Artifacts, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1992, pp30.)

17. MEED: Middle Eastern Economic Digest, 11 March 1994, p13. & UNSOM Press Release 28 February 1994.

18. G Bukowski, D A Lopez & F M McGehee, Uranium Battlefields Home and Abroad : depleted Uranium Use by US Department of Defense.

19. Anne DeVroy, "Bush Gives until Noon Today to begin Withdrawal from Kuwait", Washington Post, 23 February 1991. (Quoted in, Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time, p45)

20. "Allies drop Napalm on Iraqi Lines", International herald Tribune, 25 February 1991

21. David Noble "Professors of Terror", Third World Resurgence (Penang, Malasia) 18/19 (Feb-March 1992)

22. Jeffrey Smith "U.S. Ground Plans Aims at Quick Strikes, Mass Surrender", Washington Post, 23 February 1991

23. Soldier of Fortune, July 1992 (Quoted in, Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time, p45)

24. Ramsey Clarke, The Fire This Time, p73 & Ramsey Clarke and others, War Crimes: A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq, p17.

25. W Arkin, D Durrant & M Cherni, On Impact : Modern Warfare and the Environment - A case study of the Gulf War. (quoted in Ramsey Clarke and others, War Crimes: A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq, p87)

26. W Arkin, D Durrant & M Cherni, On Impact : Modern Warfare and the Environment - A case study of the Gulf War. (quoted in Ramsey Clarke and others, War Crimes: A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq, p51)

27. Needless Deaths in the Gulf War, p114.

28. New York Times 5 July 1991

29. Needless Deaths in the Gulf War , p97-101

30. Needless Deaths in the Gulf War , p102-104

31. R Atkinson & A DeVoy "Allies to Step up Gulf Air Offensive; Strikes Focus on Iraqis in Kuwait", New York Times, 12 February 1991

32. See Needless Deaths in the Gulf War for a fuller account.

33. Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time, p70.

34. D McManus & J Gerstenzang "Structure Built to Shelter Iraqi Elite, US Says", Los Angeles Times, 15 February 1991

35. Washington Post, 14 February 1991

36. The Nation, 6 May 1991 & New York Times, 11 June 1991

37. Ramsey Clark and others, War Crimes: A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq, p87.

38. Matti Peled, "United States Irresponsibility" in Third World War, Summer 1991 (Quoted in, Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time, p39)

39. Antony Cordesman "The Persian Gulf War: An Analysis", in The World Almanac and book of Facts: 1992, p35 (Quoted in, Ramsey Clarke, The Fire This Time, p40)

40. Mike Freeman, The Empire Strikes Back, p31.

41. I Lee & A Haines, "Health Costs of the Gulf War", British Medical Journal, 3 August 1991 (quoted in Mike Freeman, The Empire Strikes Back , p31.)

42. Dr. Eric Hoskins (draft report for UNICEF, Baghdad), Children, War and Sanctions.