EDITORIAL
When an 'imminent threat' is 15 years old
Perhaps Secretary of State Colin Powell's rare lapse of logic could be attributed to the emotion of his visit this week to Halabja, but it's disturbing to hear him say the 1988 gassing of that Kurdish village in northern Iraq justified the U.S. decision to go to war this year.
The attack on Halabja occurred in the waning days of Iraq's eight-year war with Iran, in which the use of chemical weapons by both sides was common. Furious that Kurdish militiamen in the area had allied themselves with advancing Iranians, Saddam ordered his cousin, Ali Hassan Majeed, to carry out a retribution campaign against the Kurds starting in 1987 that included forced relocations, the destruction of villages and the killing of an estimated 182,000 people.
According to a Washington Post account, the Iraqi air force dropped sarin, tabun, VX and mustard gases on Halabja in March 1988. The toxic cloud drifted over the town, killing an estimated 5,000 people and harming 10,000.
The savageness of this attack, of course, is beyond dispute. The American reaction to it at the time, however, was a long way from a decision to bring "regime change" to Baghdad.
Although the United States condemned the Iraqi government's use of chemical weapons as a "grave violation" of international law, the Reagan administration did not sanction Saddam, who was regarded as a U.S. ally because of his war against Iran's Islamic revolutionary government.
If the attack on Halabja wasn't cause for the United States to attack Iraq in 1988, how then could it be presented as an "imminent threat" to national security 15 years later?
Indeed, Powell, when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposed the first war against Iraq in 1991 and supported the first President Bush in halting the American advance into that country before it reached Baghdad.
If the Halabja massacre was sufficient cause for regime change in 2003, why didn't he advocate it when we were there in 1991?
Powell has by and large remained above the rhetorical gyrations the White House has made to justify its Iraq policy. We'd hate to think that's changing.
