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NEWS ... GLOBAL NEWS ... at which neuroscience is progressing, DID IRAN GAS IRAQ'S KURDS? prompting the researchers to call for an S President George W. Bush once said, "If this is not evil, then evil has no urgent debate into the ethical issues meaning", in reference to the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's alleged crime surrounding future uses for the technology. | against the Kurds in which he's said to have used chemical weapons to destroy entire If brain-reading can be refined, it could | Kurdish villages and torture children in front of their parents. Bush's statement was an quickly be adopted to assist interrogations | attempt to persuade the Iraqi nation, Americans and the international community that of criminals and terrorists, and even usher | his decision to invade Iraq was justified on the basis of the 1988 Halabja case. in a "Minority Report" era (as portrayed in Halabja is referred to as one event in a large-scale campaign called Al-Anfal, which the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of | Human Rights Watch said in an exhaustive study, published in 1994, amounted to an that name), where judgements are handed _| extermination campaign against the Kurds of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of at least down before the law is broken on the —_| 50,000 and perhaps as many as 100,000 people, many of them women and children. strength of an incriminating brain scan. But when the former Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz appeared in court in Baghdad The researchers are honing the technique _| on trial for the Al-Anfal massacres, he testified that Iraqi forces didn't use poison gas to distinguish between passing thoughts against the Kurds, that Iraq did not possess mustard gas, and that it was Iran that did it. and genuine intentions. Aziz's remarks echoed a similar statement mentioned in a Stephen C. Pelletiere (Source: The Guardian, 9 February 2007) commentary which appeared in the New York Times of 31 January 2003, yet no one seems to have noticed it. Here is part of what he wrote about the claim that the former PRESCRIPTION DRUG DEATHS Iraqi leader gassed 5,000 Kurds at Halabja, a town in the southern part of Iraqi SKYROCKET IN USA Kurdistan with about 60,000 inhabitants, the village that had the misfortune of being on Posen from prescription drugs has the frontlines of the Iran-Iraq War: risen to become the second-largest "...as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the cause of unintentional deaths in the United Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was States, according to the Centers for Disease _| privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do Control and Prevention (CDC). with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the According to the CDC's Morbidity and Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report Mortality Weekly Report (9 February went into great detail on the Halabja affair. 2007), researchers found that deaths from "This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the prescription drugs rose from 4.4 per course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill 100,000 people in 1999 to 7.1 per 100,000 _ | Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian in 2004. This increase represents a jump border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that from 11,000 people to almost 20,000 in the | ¢Xchange. But they were not Iraq's main target. ; ; span of five years. Among the 20,000 who "And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle, the United States Defense died, more than 8,500—double the number Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. sve 4 ic a : "The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around oe depreccants an dse jms ne aly Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been doubled from 671 to 1.300 > killed with a blood agent—that is, a cyanide-based gas—which Iran was known to use. ee The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time. "These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in the New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran. "I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because, as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. i wa I ° "The Ba'athist regime did kill thousands of Kurds during fighting to suppress are safe and effective when, in reality, they | occasional uprisings by what Americans call gangs or terror groups. Iran, Turkey and from 1999—were from "other and unspecified drugs". Deaths from Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and outspoken critic of pharmaceutical companies, said the drug industry is freely killing Americans. "The entire drug industry, including the monopolistic drug giants and their FDA [Food and Drug Administration] co- conspirator, has clearly become the single greatest threat to the health and safety of the American people," Adams said. "And yet the FDA continues to push more drugs onto more Americans than ever before, all the while pretending these drugs are neither. Today's pharmaceutical Syria have also killed thousands of Kurds, and of course the USA has killed thousands industry is a massive fraud being | of innocent Iraqis to maintain order, albeit unintentionally. A better example of a perpetrated against the American people, | government leader using chemicals to 'gas his own people’ occurred in 1993 near Waco, propped up by illegal trade practices, Texas." monopolistic behavior and outright With Saddam's death, the opportunity for a full account of what happened to tens of criminal behavior on the part of the FDA." thousands of Kurds in Halabja and Al-Anfal appears to be lost, along with the (Source: NewsTarget, 22 February 2007, opportunity to hold the true criminals responsible for their crimes. http://www.newstarget.com/z021635.html) (Source: AlJazeera.com, 3 March 2007, http://tinyurl.com/26ajqp) at which neuroscience is progressing, prompting the researchers to call for an urgent debate into the ethical issues surrounding future uses for the technology. If brain-reading can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to t interrogations of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a "Minority Report" era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of that name), where judgements are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan. The researchers are honing the technique to distinguish between passing thoughts and genuine intentions. (Source: The Guardian, 9 February 2007) PRESCRIPTION DRUG DEATHS SKYROCKET IN USA Posen from prescription drugs has risen to become the second-largest cause of unintentional deaths in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (9 February 2007), researchers found that deaths from prescription drugs rose from 4.4 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 7.1 per 100,000 in 2004. This increase represents a jump from 11,000 people to almost 20,000 in the span of five years. Among the 20,000 who died, more than 8,500—double the number from 1999—were from "other and unspecified drugs". Deaths from psychotherapeutic drugs, like antidepressants and sedatives, nearly doubled from 671 to 1,300. Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and outspoken critic of pharmaceutical companies, said the drug industry is freely killing Americans. "The entire drug industry, including the monopolistic drug giants and their FDA [Food and Drug Administration] co- conspirator, has clearly become the single greatest threat to the health and safety of the American people," Adams said. "And yet the FDA continues to push more drugs onto more Americans than ever before, all the while pretending these drugs are safe and effective when, in reality, they are neither. Today's pharmaceutical industry is a massive fraud being perpetrated against the American people, propped up by illegal trade practices, monopolistic behavior and outright criminal behavior on the part of the FDA." (Source: NewsTarget, 22 February 2007, hitp://www.newstarget.con/z021635.html) APRIL — MAY 2007 NEXUS +9 www.nexusmagazine.com