06.02.03.

Jf 21-TV-avisen, der gennem behandlingen af Halabja for alle, der har fulgt godt med gennem årene eller er historikere, kom til at virke som krigspropaganda , så bør TV-avisen bruge denne nuancerende korrektion for at genoprette sin troværdighed

mvh , ah

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003 23:26:28 +0100, TFF Sweden <TFF@transnational.org> wrote:

Åbent Brev til TV-Avisen

Hvad der skete i Halabja i 1988 er givetvis en forbrydelse mod

menneskeheden og som sådan værdig at mindes og minde hinanden om.

Det er imidlertid ikke ligegyldigt hvordan begivenheden præsenteres

og hvem der gøres ansvarlig for den, ex- eller implicit.

Jeg véd naturligvis ikke hvem der begik forbrydelsen. Det gør

TV-Avisen heller ikke. Derimod véd enhver interesseret, at

skyldsspørgsmålet stadig er til debat. Vi véd også at den vestverden,

der idag anklager Irak og Saddam Hussein for forbrydelsen - som

TV-Avisen også gjorde i aften - ikke løftede en eneste finger da den

fandt sted, fordi Irak i en vis forstand udkæmpede en

stedfortræderkrig mod Iran til nytte for Vesten.

Her er et par eksempler på at skyldsspørgsmålet næppe er så klart:

(1)

_____

Subject: Did Saddam 'Gas His Own People'?

From: The Wisdom Fund <twflist@macosx.com>

To: <tff@transnational.org>

THE WISDOM FUND News & Views - http://www.twf.org/News.html

It appears that there is scant evidence that "Saddam gassed his own

people." Yet this mantra is repeated as a fact, over and over again, by

virtually all media. Shouldn't someone check this out?

Our concern is based on two articles: One by Jude Wanniski (former

associate editor of The Wall Street Journal), and Robert Fisk of the

Independent (arguably one of the most knowledgeable reporters in the Middle

East). Excerpts from these are included follow:

"There is no evidence Saddam used anthrax or any other chemical weapons

against the Iraqi Kurds. There have been allegations, but Iraq has always

insisted it did not use such weapons in the two 1989 incidents alleged.

There were estimates that 1,400 to 4,000 Kurds died of chemical weapons in

an Iraqi offensive. The Iraq Defense Minister insisted it did not use gas

and that it was neither logical or feasible to use gas against small groups

of Kurds in areas through which government forces had to pass. The sole

'evidence' seems to be the finding of a British laboratory that soil

samples in the Kurdish region contained mustard gas (not anthrax)."-Jude

Wanniski, "Did Saddam Hussein Gas His Own People?," Supply Side Investor,

October 17, 2001

"No sooner had I filed a series of reports to London on this new and

terrible war crime of Saddam Hussein than a British diplomat, lunching with

one of my editors in London, remarked that 'Bob doesn't seem to understand

the situation.' True, he said, gas was a terrible weapon. But Saddam was

fighting the West's war against Iranian fundamentalism . . . The French had

sold Saddam Mirage jets. The Germans had provided him with the gas that had

me almost wretching on the train from Ahwaz. The Americans had sold him

helicopters for spraying crops with pesticide (the 'crops', of course,

being human beings). The British gave Saddam bailey bridges. And I later

met the Cologne arms dealer who flew from the Pentagon to Baghdad with US

satellite photos of the Iranian front lines - to help Saddam kill more

Iranians."-Robert Fisk, "What Madness is Seizing Messrs Clinton and Blair

Today?," Independent, February 13, 1998

LINKS to these articles at http://www.twf.org/News/Y2001/1119-Iraq.html

----------------------------

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is

distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in

receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

(2)

________

Og her findes Stephen Pelletier's artikel fra New York Times den 31.

december 2002

A War Crime or an Act of War?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/31PELL.html?ex=

Heri hedder det blandt andet:

"The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its

citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence

most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the

town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year

Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its

own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam

Hussein.

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were

bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any

certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not

the only distortion in the Halabja story.

I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence

Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war,

and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was

privy to much of the classified material that flowed through

Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed

a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war

against the United States; the classified version of the report went

into great detail on the Halabja affair."

________

Med erfaringerne fra mediedækningen af Kroatien, Bosnien og Kosovo in

mente bør man være forsigtig med at fremme historier i tider med

voldsom propagandakrig fra begge sider i en aktuel konflikt. Det er

svært at IKKE se timingen af indslaget - samtidig med den indledende

historie om at danskerne har skiftet holdning til fordel for en krig

- som relateret til udenrigsminister Colin Powells tale i går i

Sikkerhedsrådet, en tale som baseredes mere på påstande, hypoteser og

indicier end på beviser.

Det er ikke på nogen måde urimeligt at fremhæve at Saddam Hussein er

en udemokratisk og tidvis brutal leder. Heller ikke at spejle den

menneskelige tragedie, som Halabja-begivenheden skabte, også for dem

vi så i indslaget.

Det er derimod yderst betænkeligt at præsentere begivenheder og

skyldforhold som om de var indiskutable og uimodsagte, når dette ikke

er tilfældet. Og gør det i en sammanhæng hvor det KUN kan bidrage til

at heppe på krig.

Så meget om Jeres dækning af Halabja.

Hvis TV-Avisen iøvrigt er interesseret i krænkninger af irakernes

menneskerettigheder er det på høje tid med nogle reportager om de af

vesten besluttede sanktioner, der ifølge FN har kostet omkring 1

million mennesker livet eller modsvarende 200 Halabjaer - uden udsigt

til at skulle hæves.

Under mine 2 x 2 ugers besøg i Irak sidste år og i år har jeg med

egne øjne set disse konsekvenser, ført samtaler med relevante

internationale humanitære organisationer samt FN og vidner gerne om

disse sanktioners dybt umenneskeligt konsekvenser på 25 millioner

uskyldige civile i landet.

Afslutningsvis vil jeg være taknemmelig for at få den redaktionelt

ansvarliges vurdering af om ikke det ville være rimeligt at a) gøre

opmærksom på i en følgende TV-Avis at skyldsspørgsmålet ikke er

afklaret og b) lave et eller flere indslag om de nævnte

menneskerettighedskrænkelser, der følger i kølvandet af sanktionerne.

Med venlig hilsen

Jan Øberg

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