Cannon Fodder, part 1: Background to Betrayal
by Hadding Scott and Kevin Alfred Strom

Welcome to American Dissident Voices. Today's program, which I've
entitled "Cannon Fodder, part 1: Background to Betrayal," was written
and prepared for broadcast by Hadding Scott and yours truly, Kevin
Alfred Strom.

Thucydides, the Athenian historian, wrote in his account of the Peloponnesian War, "The way that most men deal with traditions, even
traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike as they
are delivered, without applying any critical test whatever," and
furthermore, "There are many other unfounded ideas current among the
rest of the Hellenes, even on matters of contemporary history, which
have not been obscured by time. For instance, there is the notion that
the Lacedaemonian kings have two votes each, the fact being that they
have only one; and that there is a company of Pitane, there being simply
no such thing. So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation
of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand."
(Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, tr. Richard Crawley)

Thucydides' observation about the proliferation of easily disproven
falsehoods during wartime in Democratic Athens rings true also in
democratic America during this "war on terror" and its accompanying
hysteria.

By the end of this program I hope to have shown that the picture of Iraq
and of Saddam Hussein presented by the mainstream media is highly
distorted and misleading. The most important thing that I hope to
accomplish here is to demonstrate to our listeners, who are probably
already suspicious of the government and the mainstream media, that the
extent of their misrepresentation is much greater than the average
person even dares to suspect. I also expect that the facts presented
will make it clear what the proposed war is really about.

There are two distinct cases against Iraq that have been disseminated
among the American people. One is that Iraq may have committed an act of
aggression against the U.S., through some secret involvement in the
World Trade Center attack or the subsequent anthrax-mailings in 2001.
The other is an unsubstantiated allegation that Iraq has flouted
restrictions placed on the kinds of weapons that it could possess
following the Gulf War of 1991.

It is abundantly clear, however, that the concern about compliance or
non-compliance with United Nations protocols is a mere pretense. It is a
fig leaf. The really persuasive argument in the minds of Americans who
accept Bush's call for war -- the real meaning for them of the words
"Iraq's weapons of mass-destruction" -- is that Iraq may possess
weapons that will be used in another attack against the United States
such as occurred on September 11, 2001. To the average American, that is
what all the talk of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass-destruction really
means. The requirements of the United Nations per se carry little or no
weight in the minds of most Americans; if the United States could be
motivated to go to war just to enforce U.N. resolutions, the State of
Israel would have had a regime-change and a partition imposed upon it
many years ago.

The accusation that Iraq may have weapons of mass destruction is not
really about the United Nations at all. If the principles of the United
Nations mattered then there could be no talk of attacking Iraq without
U.N. approval. Rather, it is all about scaring the American people into
a war.

The baseless innuendoes that Iraq may have been involved in the World
Trade Center attack and the worry that Iraq may commit or facilitate
such an attack against the United States in the future are both
groundless. Both stories are attempts to exploit the fear and anger that
the 9-11 attack generated, and thus to manipulate the American people
into supporting a war against a country that has done them no harm.

The characterization of the leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, as
irrational and dangerous has been carefully cultivated by the
Jewish-controlled news media for many years now. The American people
could never believe that Saddam Hussein would ever deliberately provoke
a war with the United States if they had not become accustomed to
hearing over the course of many years that Saddam Hussein is "So-Damned
Insane" -- that he is an irrational maniac who gassed his own people and
does other cruel things for no reason at all.

The fact that Saddam Hussein has been able to survive one crisis after
another as leader of an ethnically and religiously divided country like
Iraq is in itself prima facie evidence that Saddam Hussein is not
irrational. He has had to be very realistic and rational indeed to
survive the kinds of crises that his country has endured, from the
Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 to the Gulf War to the ruinous sanctions that
have caused 1.7 million deaths in Iraq, to the frequent bombings that
the U.S. and Britain have carried out, and of course, the many
assassination plots, some of which have been sponsored by the United
States. No leader who is insane or out of touch with reality could
survive all that

Let's examine the record. Saddam Hussein has been the de facto leader of
Iraq since 1975. Following the retirement of President Bakr in 1979,
Saddam Hussein became the third Arab Nationalist President of Iraq.

Although the Communist Party of Iraq was forcibly shut down in May of
1979, and although one of Saddam Hussein's first actions was the
notorious bloody purge of several hundred persons in the government
accused of conspiring against Iraq's sovereignty, Iraq under the secular
Ba'ath or Arab Nationalist government has been arguably the freest of
all Arabic-speaking countries.

In Iraq, the rigors of Islamic law are not in force. Women are not
required to wear veils or to cover their heads, and are allowed to have
a career. In Iraq you can even buy liquor if you want. Before the Gulf
War in 1991, it was the habit of some people in Kuwait to go into Iraq
whenever they wanted to cut loose and have a good time. The government
of Iraq also strongly encourages literacy among the people. In general,
Saddam Hussein has represented progress in the Arab world.

Iraq was facing a crisis because of the new Islamic Republic in Iran,
which, aside from provoking the hostility of the United States by
seizing and holding hostage 50 employees of the U.S. embassy, also set
out to foment unrest in neighboring countries. In April 1980 members of
a Shi'ite political party called al-Dawah attempted to assassinate Iraqi
foreign minister Tariq Aziz, who is a Christian. An attempt on the life
of Iraq's minister of culture and information also occurred. Since
al-Dawah was supported and encouraged by Iran, in the following
September Iraq declared war on Iran, and set as a war aim the
acquisition of the important Shatt-al-Arab waterway. Since these two
assassination attempts had preceded the war, one could truthfully say
that when Saddam Hussein attacked Iran he was beginning a war against
Radical Islamic terrorism.

In the early stages of secular Iraq's war on Islamic terror it appeared
that a quick victory was the likely outcome, since many of Iran's
competent military leaders and pilots who were not Islamic religious
fanatics had been imprisoned, and Iran was unable to buy spare parts for
its U.S.-built aircraft because of the hostage crisis. Iraqi armored
columns made rapid progress deep into Iran.

But then Iran released its competent military personnel from prison and
also mobilized its multitudes of Shi'ite religious fanatics, who very
often brought their own burial shrouds with them to the front. The fact
that the Iranians had multitudes of people ready to die gave them a
chance against the Iraqi forces, who, unlike the Iranians, were not
religious fanatics eager to die in battle.

One major miscalculation which had encouraged Saddam Hussein to launch
the war was an expectation that Iran's substantial Arab population in
the "Arabistan" region would welcome the Arab Nationalist Iraqis as
liberators and turn against the oppressive theocracy of the non-Arab
Iranians. Saddam Hussein's vision of Iran's Arab minority revolting and
embracing their brother Arabs as liberators did not materialize.

In September 1981, the Iranians won their first ground battles, and
continued to win -- using human waves of religious fanatics. These human
waves, including old men and children as young as nine, would charge
across minefields clearing the way so that Iranian tanks could safely
roll through on top of them. Saddam Hussein learned what we learned only
in 2001: It is very difficult to protect yourself against an enemy who
has many supporters ready to die for their cause.

In June of 1982, Saddam Hussein attempted to make peace, but the
ayatollahs were running the war and would make no peace; the ayatollahs
had the ambition of creating a Shi'ite Islamic Republic in Iraq, and
they set the goal of capturing a major city in Iraq that could be
declared the provisional capital of an Iraqi Islamic Republic. Since the
war was going badly Saddam Hussein was forced to buy additional
weaponry, including crop dusting helicopters from the United States,
which were understood to be for the delivery of chemical weapons.

It was a war of attrition: The Iranians suffered much higher casualties
than the Iraqis, but Iran was a much larger country with many more
people. Iran could suffer four times as many casualties as Iraq and
still win the war. In April 1984 Saddam Hussein requested to meet the
Ayatollah Khomeini in a neutral location to negotiate peace, but the
offer was refused. Iraq tried several times to make peace, but as late
as 1988 Iran rejected a United Nations resolution calling for a
ceasefire.

It was during the war with Iran that Iraq improved the range of its
Soviet-made SCUD missiles, so that they could reach Teheran. Iraq also
developed a capacity for mass producing chemical weapons, though the
number of casualties that Iran suffered from chemical weapons was very
small compared to the total number dead: As of 1986 the total Iranian
casualties from chemical weapons was estimated at 10,000, compared to
one million plus Iranians who died in the entire war. Iran also used
chemical warfare, but this did not become widely known until 1988. [New
York Times, Jan 17, 1988; I, 9:5]

A threat of dispatching chemical warheads against Teheran is considered
to have been a major factor in persuading the Islamic Republic of Iran
to make peace, allowing Iraq to retain the Shatt-al-Arab waterway which
Iraq had managed to seize again, and which had been Iraq's main
objective in the war.

The Iran-Iraq War was a victory, although very hard-won, for Iraq. The
total casualties suffered by Iraq in that war are estimated at 375,000
-- about one in 40 Iraqis killed or maimed. Iraq also lost a lot of its
oil production capacity as a result of Iranian air attacks, and had
incurred a large debt because of the need to buy weapons.

Nonetheless, the eight-year war against the Islamic Republic of Iran had
discouraged Iran from supporting Islamic revolution in other countries,
and this not only preserved Iraq but aided other countries of the
region. The United States was also well served by the blunting of Iran's
influence, and some political scientists even suggested that Iraq should
replace Israel as the primary U.S. ally in the region. In addition to
its good relations with the U.S., Saddam Hussein and Iraq had gained
prestige among Arabs, and Iraq had become militarily the second most
powerful country in the region, after Israel.

The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s was in no way an indicator of lunacy, nor
of any desire on the part of Saddam Hussein to conquer the world.

During that war, something very significant occurred: In 1981 the State
of Israel dispatched its jets to attack and destroy a nuclear reactor in
Iraq. The many knee-jerk supporters of Israel have regarded this attack
as a righteous move by the wise and clever Jews to prevent Iraq from
developing a nuclear weapon. The fact is, however, that Iraq's nuclear
reactor was in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of
which Iraq was a charter signatory, and which Israel had never signed.

Dr. Sigvard Eklund, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, stated to the U.N. Security Council on 19 June 1981 that the
Israelis had acted on the basis of faulty intelligence and really had no
justification at all for what they had done.

It has been stated by the Israelis that a laboratory located 40 meters
below the reactor -- the figure was later corrected to four meters --
which allegedly had not been discovered by IAEA inspectors had been
destroyed. The existence of a vault under the reactor that has
apparently been hit by the bombing was well known to the inspectorate,
That vault contains the control rod drives and has to be accessible to
the staff for maintenance purposes.... [T]hat space could not be used to
produce plutonium.

Putting it more plainly, Dr. Eklund said:

In fulfilling its responsibilities the Agency has inspected the Iraqi
reactors and has not found evidence of any activity not in accordance
with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The President of the United Nations Security Council, Mr. Porfirio Muñoz
Ledo criticized the action and attitude of Israel in no uncertain terms:

[T]he reasons on which the Government of Israel bases its contention are
as unacceptable as the act of aggression it committed. It is
inadmissible to invoke the right to self-defense when no armed attack
has taken place. The concept of preventive war, which for many years
served as justification for the abuses of powerful States, since it left
it to their discretion to define what constituted a threat to them, was
definitively abolished by the Charter of the United Nations.

And,

Israel's attack on Iraq's nuclear installations is not an isolated act;
it should be seen as the climax of escalating violations of
international law. The background to it has already been described both
by the General Assembly and the Security Council. It includes annexation
of territory by conquest, persistence in an illegal occupation, the
denial of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, and frequent
acts of aggression and harassment against neighboring States.

Even the United States joined in condemning Israel's attack on the
Osirak nuclear facility, although apologetically so, but the Israelis
dismissed the condemnation and wailed about always being persecuted by
the U.N., all the while continuing their own development of nuclear
weapons. [ Security Council Official Records, S/PV.2288 19 June 1981,
 http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/be25c7c81949e71a052567270057c82b/4aed70baa0b37b53052567fd00762f30!OpenDocument
]

Although the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency could
say with certainty that the Iraqis were not diverting uranium or
producing plutonium at Osirak as the Israelis had claimed, and although
the United Nations Security Council had passed a resolution condemning
Israel's action, the Israeli misrepresentation has been kept alive in
the minds of the American people. Immediately after the end of the
Iran-Iraq War Zionist Jew William Safire wrote: "The Iraqi [Saddam
Hussein] trails the Asian [Pol Pot] in the number slaughtered only
because his nuclear capability was curtailed by the Israelis." [New York
Times; Sept 1, 1988]

If you hear some Christian Zionist know-it-all like Glenn Beck saying
that Israel did good by bombing Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, you
should tell him that even the unreservedly pro-Israel president Ronald
Reagan condemned Israel's action, as did the U.N. Security Council.
Better yet, tell him to stop getting his opinions from columnists like
William Safire and do some real research.

As it became clear in 1988 who the winner of the Iran-Iraq War would be,
a smear-campaign commenced against the country that was now the leading
challenger to Israel's power in the Middle East. The story that Iraq had
gassed its own Kurdish citizens at al-Halabja in northern Iraq was not
such a big story when it first appeared, and one could not have guessed
from the first reports in April of 1988 that Saddam Hussein would become
primarily known as the man who "gassed his own people." It actually
didn't become a subject of major importance until that September, after
Iran and Iraq had made peace. Iran was the source of the story that
Saddam Hussein had gassed his own Kurdish citizens at al-Halabja, and
initially there was a note of skepticism about the story. Malcolm W.
Browne, wrote in the New York Times of April 17, 1988: "Iran expects to
reap a propaganda harvest by showing that Iraq is gassing those of its
own citizens deemed sympathizers in the seven-year-old war.... According
to the Iranians, a single Iraqi chemical attack on the Iranian-occupied
village of Halabja last month killed 5,000 people and injured 5,000
others. Baghdad has said that 58 Iraqi soldiers were injured by Iranian
chemical weapons." [New York Times April 17, IV, 7:1]

Although the Iranians claimed 5,000 dead at al-Halabja, Western
journalists who visited the town saw "more than a hundred bodies." On
September 1, when Iraq had won the war and was mopping up the Kurdish
rebellion, two pieces about Saddam's gassing of the Kurds appeared in
the New York Times on the same day, one by William Safire, in which the
politically connected Zionist Jew advocated providing the Kurds with
stinger missiles. This rabble-rousing by a Jewish journalist about the
alleged gassing of the Kurds was the first expression of what became the
U.S. conflict with Iraq.

Here's the shocker: it's all a big lie. Iraq gassed no Kurds. The
physical appearance of the bodies indicates the cause of death, and the
hundred or so Kurds who died at al-Halabja were not victims of Iraqi
mustard or nerve gas, but of cyanide gas, which only Iran used in that
war. Subsequent to the lie about who was responsible for al-Halabja, the
Kurds themselves picked up on the idea of claiming that the Iraqis were
using gas on them, but no physical evidence for these claims has ever
been produced, and the symptoms of gassing claimed by the Kurds do not
match any known agent. [  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3441 ] This lie
was exposed by Stephen C. Pelletiere and Douglas V. Johnson of the U.S.
Army War College, and by Jude Wanniski, a former associate editor of the
Wall Street Journal. Recently Wanniski sent a letter to George W. Bush's
press-secretary, the Jew Ari Fleischer, stating:

You might want to have one of your assistants call over to the Pentagon
and ask for its 1990 report, "Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the
Middle East," which concluded the Iraqi Kurds who were gassed were
probably the victims of the Iranians. [
 http://polyconomics.com/PrintPage.asp?TextID=1899 ]

Ronald Reagan's second term was ending in 1988, and George Bush Sr.*, a
very different character from Reagan, was running for president. [*Bush
Sr. as Vice President cast two tie-breaking votes in the Senate to
continue U.S. production of chemical weapons, which casts a strange
light on his son's seeming prohibitionist fervor about such weapons.]

The Reagan Administration had winked at Iraq's use of chemical weapons,
but Bush, following the line established by William Safire, decided to
make political hay out of Iraq's fictitious use of chemical weapons
against the Kurds. Candidate Bush said: "They must know that continued
violation of the ban against the use of such weapons carries a heavy
penalty. Not just a fine or a minor sanction that can be ignored." It
appears that Pappy Bush was using an excuse to pick a fight with the
leading enemy of the State of Israel so that he could get Jewish votes
and favorable treatment from the Zionist Jews in the media. Bush
Senior's belligerent words against Iraq of course came to fruition in
the Gulf War, which the Bush Administration deliberately caused.

I hope that I have not tried the patience of regular listeners too much
by discussing at length a leader who is not of our people. I think,
however, that the Jews have forced us into a consideration of this man
and his people, since the Jewish establishment is attempting to involve
us in a conflict with them which would serve Jewish interests and no
interest of ours.

This program, which I title Cannon Fodder, will continue next week, when
I will be discussing what the Jews hope to gain from a war on Iraq.

Today's program was written by Hadding Scott and prepared for broadcast
by Kevin Alfred Strom. Until next week, this is Kevin Alfred Strom
asking you to join us, the men and women of the National Alliance, in
our great effort to restore the freedom and self-determination of our
people.