01/12/14 – Barry Lando – The Scott Horton Show

For KPFK 90.7 FM in LA January 12th 2014.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is anti-war radio All right, y'all welcome the show it is anti-war radio I'm your host Scott Horton here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.
My website is Scott Horton org You can find all my interview archives there more than 3,000 of them now going back to 2003 Scott Horton org and you can also follow me on Facebook Twitter and YouTube at slash Scott Horton show Our guest today is Barry Lando He's written this great new piece for counterpunch called the American legacy in Iraq He's the author.
He's a former producer for 60 minutes on CBS and is the author of the new novel The Watchman's File He also helped make the documentary the trial of Saddam Hussein.
Welcome to show Barry.
How are you doing?
Fine, thanks Very good.
Very happy to have you on the show And I gotta tell you I was very pleased to see your article at counterpunch org So many people just want to pretend the Iraq War never happened.
It's the new forgotten war after Korea now And there's just so little coverage of it for the most part and certainly as far as historical records although it is back in the news with Kind of the heating back up of the Sunni Shia civil war there and the fight over Anbar province But so good timing to see this piece here at counterpunch org the American legacy in Iraq I'm sure you're familiar with the story that At least the British I don't know if they ever pulled the Americans about this But the British people had answered that they thought that only ten or twenty thousand people had died in the entire Iraq war Which just goes to show the complete and total blackout of real information about what's going on there?
So I'm sure the American people are just as recently just just in an article that they wrote about the war Also only referred to American casualties that it cost America 4,000 lives and a trillion dollars Not a mention made of what it cost Iraq, right?
Yeah, and even good anti-war congressman like Walter Jones Who you know, he started out being Freedom Fries Jones and now he's as anti-war as anybody in Washington, DC but I don't think I've ever heard him murmur so much as a word about the civilian casualties or or Any other casualties in these wars other than the American ones and You know, that's part of the brainwash and that's what helps make it Okay to keep killing people is to differentiate the value of their lives from our own.
But anyway So let's get into it.
Let's go back to I don't know say 1980 and Jimmy Carter's green light for Saddam back when he was our loyal sock puppet there Yeah, it's not clear when he when the cart wins for them Invaded Iran after Khomeini had Had taken over and had taken the hostages you're talking about that Right.
Yeah, I remember There's at least at Robert Perry's site He had a document that was Alexander Haig reporting back to Ronald Reagan that King Fodd Told him that Jimmy Carter had given Saddam Hussein the green light to invade through him So exactly it's that's about the only document there is to show it I Tried to investigate that and writing my book web of deceit about Iraq and that was by far the strongest evidence So everything seemed, you know all circumstantial as the evidence was that the u.s.
Did give give the go-ahead.
They certainly supported Saddam after the invasion and More and more strongly as the war went on Yeah, well and there's no question about Ronald Reagan's support There's the famous picture of course of special envoy Donald Rumsfeld over there shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983 What was going on there?
Well the shaking hands and and by then what Rumsfeld was there to to make?deals with Saddam about the supplying of intelligence and weapons to Saddam And at the same time hardly a word about human rights Also hardly a word or not a word at all about the words news that was already coming out from that Saddam was using chemical weapons already against the Iranians and the u.s.
Thereafter agreed to supply there was a guy from the DIA the Defense Intelligence Agency was on the ground in Iraq in Baghdad giving them coordinates of the Iranian positions and As the u.s.
Knew full well that Saddam was using chemical weapons to hit them Yeah, you know when it comes down to it in that case It almost sounds like they're really just at war with Iran and they're using Saddam as plausible deniability in a way, right?
Here's some chemical weapons.
Here's some satellite information for targeting with them and well in fact even you remember in when Halabja came You remember in when Halabja came when Saddam turned his chemical weapons against a Kurdish village After the Kurds had had risen up as the war was going on against Iran Saddam bombed his own his own Kurds with chemical weapons and the United States was still still was giving an intelligence aid and other arms to Saddam and The u.s.
The White House did its best to keep that whole scandal quiet And there were no sanctions brought against us Saddam for doing that and the United States was the main reason there weren't any Yeah, they tried to blame it on Iran.
In fact Jude Winooski in his defenses of Saddam before the war in 2003 when he was trying to stop the war he had I guess fallen for the lie that Iran had did Halabja back When and he was still using that as a reason to not attack Saddam now that it's in doubt that Saddam did it when of Course that was the centerpiece of Colin Powell's campaign that that guy worked for us.
He'd committed this massacre.
I Spoke to the DIA agent who was on the ground in in Iraq At the time and he said that when Halabja took place and the u.s.
Found out about it immediately They sent word to Washington saying hey, you know He's using chemical weapons against his own people now and they also found he was using Binary chemical weapons against the Iranians the worst kind of chemical weapons nerve gas Washington Said to the the DIA people in Baghdad.
They said hold on We're going to talk about this and for one week There were no contacts with the government in Iraq And then Washington gave the word that we're going to go ahead and continue to support them So they knew full well what they were doing And now to what extent did any of the chemical and or germ weapons actually come from the United States as opposed to just other?western countries like France I Think they came from a number of different countries through a lot came from Germany even England The United States wasn't the only one but the u.s.
Was supplying certain components and weapons although a lot of people in the Pentagon and other people trying to Halt exports to Iraq knowing what was going on there did their best to stop it But the White House kept pushing them through and what's a part of the scandal at the time?about Funneling the money to Saddam by way of farm loans agricultural subsidies or something exactly And there was Italy's Banco Nacionale de Lavora made considerable loans to Iraq huge amounts of loans to Iraq It was a very seamy process The CIA was fully aware of what was going on In fact, it was it was thought they were probably the ones who were orchestrating the whole thing Mm-hmm.
And now let me ask you this because I was just a kid at the time really but in the 1980s Say right there at the end of the Cold War, you know 1989 through 91 could you have imagined or do you think anybody could have imagined that our Ally our loyal sock puppet fascist dictator over there Saddam Hussein that that he and his country would serve as the whipping boy for American power for the next generation for the next 20 years with the fall of the USSR That this is where we would go to fight Yeah, amazing Absolutely amazing and I think that we were talking at the beginning about these the Americans not knowing anything about Iraq I mean, it's not just about the latest what happened during the latest invasion.
I think the entire history of u.s.
Relations with Iraq And not and certainly other parts of that the Middle East as well but are really in what I call kind of an historical black hole either they were never reported at the time or if they were Americans just didn't want to know and very little attention was ever given to them and it's all been forgotten Right.
Yeah, in fact, you know, it's pretty arbitrary to even start this conversation in 1980 where we could go back to the 1950s and the CIA's help for Saddam Hussein and his cousin and their overthrow of the king and And then, you know the history the CIA, you know Like it was Cambodia under Pol Pot or something the CIA giving out lists of anybody with glasses to be rounded up and shot Right in 1963 General Kassim was overthrown.
He was kind of a nationalist leader in Iraq and Saddam had come in with him and he was overthrown and Saddam Hussein then was one of the ones who participated in the torture and murdered of Hundreds perhaps thousands of supposed communists and leftists and They were working off lists.
A lot of those lists were provided by the CIA So we're talking generations of brutality from the Americans visited upon these people and of course remember arguing for it wasn't Iraq, but you go back to 1953 and Iran the CIA already overthrew Mossadegh the first, you know a democratically elected leader of Iran, which is really what led to the the situation in Iran today, right?
Yeah And and all the effort to support Saddam in the 1980s to contain their revolution the policy that George Bush reversed George Bush jr.
Reversed in 2003, but I'm skipping ahead here It's Barry Lando.
He's written this great piece for counterpunch the American legacy in Iraq So then 1990 91 let's go summer 1990 Saddam Hussein Gets the message from April Glaspie Something or another I guess I'll let you characterize it, but he goes ahead he invades Kuwait Can you give us the Barry Lando version of what went on there?
I find the invasion of Kuwait One of the most interesting parts of the whole history and that but no one is really seriously looked at I think there's a good book there somewhere That that when when After the war with Iran was over and and Iraq was totally exhausted and then and then Kuwait Demanded that Iraq pay it Billions of dollars which Kuwait had loaned Iraq actually that the fight Iran and in their place Tensions are increasing between Iraq and Kuwait They always had been a lot of tension and Saddam is very upset that Kuwait is acting very arrogantly and apparently Secretly drilling oil taking Iraqi oil as well in any case as this is going on general Schwartz coff was then heading the the Middle East command of the US Army was Telling the Kuwaitis don't bend down don't Don't bend down don't you know keep the hanging in there don't give away to Saddam don't negotiate with them and they were getting the same message from the CIA and At the end at the same time when Saddam went to talk to the American Ambassador April Glaspie and told her about his problems and said, you know, what would you do if we if we if we?
Moved against Kuwait.
She basically said well the US has no interest in that area at all There's no red lines, but she wasn't the only one several American officials made that same statement in different places She wasn't the only one at all.
So Saddam was totally nonplussed when he moved into Kuwait and all of a sudden he's it's like he's moved into a trap which snapped shut and After that one Bush himself Said at the time of the invasion.
He didn't know what he was going to do and for several days He literally did not know how he was going to react and It was only after Margaret Thatcher came there to kind of to talk to him in Aspen where they were meeting that Bush suddenly decided okay, he's going to react forcefully very forcefully and There was no way he was going to let Saddam out of the trap and they never did Mm-hmm.
Well, so I guess uh, you know the April Glaspie part of it the permission to Saddam the green light that we're not It wasn't just her.
It wasn't just her.
It was a lot of American officials, right?
That part of it is legend at this point Even Ross Perot brought it up in the debates in 92 and that kind of thing but the part about Norman Schwarzkopf telling the Kuwaitis to be intransigent and Not negotiate I didn't know about that I certainly knew that You know that what was that dispute was that he was trying to make enough money to pay them back the money He borrowed from them to defend them from Iran Or to fight their side of the war anyway in the Iran-Iraq war and they were overproducing from their shared oil wells and had the Price of oil down so low that he couldn't possibly pay them back the money He owed them and that was what he was sick and tired of Iraq was going broke and Saddam was getting more and more furious and the Kuwaitis were incredibly arrogant and Almost daring him to attack and they had they and Saddam didn't know it at the time and the American people didn't know it at The time but Schwarzkopf kept telling him.
We've got your back.
I'm telling the Kuwaitis that right Boy, and the rest is history and now how many people died in that first Gulf War operation yellow ribbon and American flag from 1991 From 1990 how many people died?
I don't think you've been in in Iraq.
Yeah, I don't think anyone, you know has the totals the there was one of the most brutal part of it came with the with the uprising left after the Saddam's forces had been driven out of Kuwait and George Bush HW Bush had made his speech that made a couple of radio addresses to the Iraqis as The u.s.
Was preparing to move militarily.
They're telling the Iraqis the Iraqi people to rise up And overthrow Saddam Hussein.
I actually had the clip here that I got from your movie Barry.
Let's play it There's another way for the bloodshed to stop and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people To take matters into their own hands to force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside All right, that's the clip you're referring to there.
Yeah, but it wasn't just that I mean there was there was that he did that twice And they all but the u.s.
Also prepared No propaganda leaflets, which in the shape of Iraqi equivalent of Iraqi dollar bills or $10 bills Millions of them were dropped from low-flying planes and helicopters over Iraq So it wasn't just Bush himself, but there was a written message as well the word was out and the u.s.
Was wanted them to rise up and and then they did and George Bush turned his back and he left them to be slaughtered Yeah, and the number of people slaughtered the Shiites Estimates are into the hundreds of thousands And tens of thousands of Kurds were killed as well because they also rose up And then that's where the real quagmire set in because oh gee now we can't leave because we got these people in so much trouble now we have to have no fly zones over the north and south and You know, of course the never-ending snipe hunt for weapons of mass destruction kicked in Yeah No, the it was the funny thing is that most Americans don't even know about the uprising and and Of course the the Iraqis never forgot about it They felt they were totally betrayed and the funny thing is is that Wolfowitz who was then in the Pentagon is always considered to be kind of a hawk and on the wrong side of things by liberals He was the one who kept urging Bush He said no, we've got to go in finish this thing off go into Baghdad and then at least to support this uprising and Bush said no Right.
Well, which probably was the right decision if he hadn't you know The problem being that he told them to rise up and left them high and dry like the Great Bay of Pigs in the desert and then but when Bush jr.
Took Wolfowitz's advice and went ahead and Fought the war for the Shiite uprising.
We saw what happened.
They destabilized First they got a million people killed and then they destabilized every nation in the region and set up the excuse for ten more interventions, you're right, but I think the first time around What happened was the uprising looked like it was going to be successful because the army started going over as well That was the key thing the Iraqi generals were sort of looking at who was winning and it looked like the the rebels were winning American troops were only a few miles away from where the fighting was going on and the Iraqi army was ready to move they were ready to To support the rebellion, but then they heard the the rebels made pleas you know, they even sent delegations to Washington and they were making their air was filled with their their pleas to the Americans to help and America said no and not just not just a military, you know sending the troops in but even Sending in weapons giving them weapons.
There were huge Ammunition stocks that were that were held by the Americans in southern Iraq at the time They refused to let the rebels get access to those ammunition stocks We even talked to some rebels who were prevented from marching on Baghdad by American troops and of course the Americans allowed Saddam to continue flying is his helicopters his gunships So it what the possibility is it may not even have been necessary for the United States to send troops in and to occupy Baghdad the uprising looked like it was going to be successful Mm-hmm.
No, they really short-circuited so I didn't realize that was something actually that I learned from this clip from your movie that you linked to in your counterpunch article is the part about the American helicopters even landing on the roads and Stopping the army in their tracks the the Iraqi army when they're marching on Saddam unbelievable No I spoke to American soldiers who said they were they were literally in tears as they were Listening to and watching what was going on and we're being told by there's their Commanders they could not help All right.
Now so we got to talk about this embargo because the theory was that the embargo was being waged A really a virtual blockade complete blockade by the United Nations and and every member state Against Iraq and it was being waged Against the people of Iraq.
They admitted that much but the point being I think the Democrats explained in the 1990s that if we can make these people hungry enough and desperate enough They'll blame Saddam and they'll take out their anger on him and they'll rise up and overthrow him Right, they just kept it that way no matter how long it went without him being overthrown yeah, no the people were and there was no way they could because Saddam ruled by terror and There was no way that people could could rise up They were weak and all it did was because Saddam did control the you know the food and petrol and key supplies the government controlled those that gave them in a way even more power and The whole thing was it was it was close to a genocide It was one an awful awful way of waging war against an entire people yeah, and you talk about the The psychological damage to the whole generation of people who were raised up during that time Can you elaborate a little bit about that?
Well, this is what it wasn't.
This was a group of Harvard medical researchers who after the Embargo hadn't sanctions had been in place for only a few months Came in and they started studying the young people of Iraq of their their site You know not just their nutrition levels their health situation But also their mental Situation and they found them to be among the I forget exactly what the word was among the worst the most suffering most shell-shocked Youth of any, you know anywhere on the on the on the world that they and on the globe that they had ever studied and this was what the sanctions were just in their first year, of course, they went on for 12 years and What I found kind of interesting remarkable Is that that generation who lived through the sanctions who lived through the two the two wars?
And all the bloodshed that that when destruction that went on they are the ones who are now who have come of age in Iraq today they're the ones who are who are attempting to run the country or rip it apart and Meanwhile, of course hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of the the best educated Iraqis Long ago had fled to other parts of the world.
So Iraq has been a totally destroyed nation All right Now let me interrupt you here to say that I don't like it when people throw around the term Genocide lightly because it has a very specific definition I I think people overuse it But I also think you're not over using it and you Lincoln here to this Defense Intelligence Agency report Iraq's water treatment Vulnerabilities how we can kill the civilians of Iraq how we can poison their water supply with germs Yeah, it's it's a very astonishing documents people should take a look at them.
It's hard to believe that they're for real But they they set about and cold-bloodedly figuring out how they could take but take apart Iraq's the most important infrastructure and Then after they did that they then very carefully Calculated the mortality figures among children in Iraq over the the following months and years Yeah, all right, and now, you know, we're actually kind of running short on time.
So well here we'll go ahead and play this clip It's pretty short.
Here's Bill Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on 60 minutes in regard to the sanctions talking with Leslie Stahl We have heard that a half a million children have died I mean that's more children than died when went in in Hiroshima and You know is the price worth it I think this is a very hard choice, but the price we think the price is worth it all right, so that's from 1996 there and that clip is legend in the Middle East and It's you know said to be at least a big part of what has incited Terrorism against the United States including if you read bin Laden's declarations of war against America from 96 and 98 They both go on at length against the women and children of Iraq He says how come your blood is blood, but their blood is water we'll show you and and of course the blockade and the no-fly zones being enforced from bases on the Holy Peninsula of Saudi Arabia and all of that and so that's kind of you know Help cause the September 11th attack help motivate the September 11th attack, which then became the excuse They pretended that that was the first day in history and now they can begin intervening over there in the Middle East and We've seen how much bloodshed They've let really from Morocco to the Philippines, but especially in Iraq they went back to Iraq in 2003 and so in the last couple of minutes here I was hoping you could explain kind of give a thumbnail on how many people's you know best estimate Have died and and what kind of Trauma their society has suffered from the last major phase of American intervention there well, I think in the read somewhere the total and I don't think anybody really knows but the the total number of Iraqis killed in the last phase after the last invasion Was I think one estimate was the estimates go from something like a hundred thousand up to four hundred thousand a hundred thousand or like?
Direct you know battle casualties the four hundred thousand include not just direct But also indirect in other words malnutrition the infrastructure breaking down Health all the effects of it, but apart from that you also have literally millions of Iraqi refugees who either fled the country or who were displaced internally And you also had a civil war that a little a civil war that broke out in Iraq after the US invasion and that and because of the US invasion and that only grew in intensity and at a certain point in 19 2006 is the figures relative to the size of the country I calculated were the same or even greater than The the figures of you know the casualties of the America's Civil War in the United States It was enormous and totally unknown in the United States unknown and and not covered really by the American media You know very very skimpily in fact even what I was what got me to write a book on Iraq was when Saddam Hussein was put on trial and No one else no other foreigners were put on trial with them.
I thought there were a lot of American former heads of state British Politicians arms dealers, etc.
Who should have been in the dock along with Saddam Hussein All right.
All right Well, we're gonna have to leave it there because we're all out of time But I really appreciate your effort along these lines and making sure that this history is not lost permanently.
I Appreciate what you're doing.
It's terrific Thanks very much.
I appreciate that.
All right, everybody.
That is Barry Lando former producer for 60 minutes and Author of the watchman's file as well as the trial of Saddam Hussein read his latest encounter punch the American legacy In Iraq, and he's got links to the documentary film in the article as well.
That's been anti-war radio for this morning Thanks everybody very much for listening We're here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA My full interview archive is a Scott Horton dot org.
See you next week You