Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
February 17, 2004
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
February 14/15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
February
17, 2004
The CIA's "Brightest
Prospect" is MIA
Whatever
Happened to General Khazraji?
By GARY LEUPP
In December 2002 I wrote a piece for CounterPunch
about General Nizar al-Khazraji, the Iraqi officer who had fled
Iraq in 1999, and gone into Spanish, then Danish, exile. A top
officer under Saddam Hussein, he is widely accused of responsibility
for the use of nerve and mustard gas against Kurdish civilians
in Iraq, as well as Iranian soldiers, and the death of some 5,000
gassed Kurds in the town of Halabja in March 1988.
I am aware that the Halabja incident
has been blamed by some on Iran, and am taking no position on
the question, but am merely noting that Khazraji has been seen
as a prime suspect in Iran-Iraq War crimes. Pursued by Birgitte
Vestberg , a public prosecutor of such crimes, he was indicted
and placed under house arrest in his apartment in Sorø,
a suburb of Copenhagen, in November 2002. This was widely seen
as an embarrassment for the U.S. State Department and CIA, which
had favored him as leader of post-Saddam Iraq.
The Khazraji story was well covered in
the mainstream press, and widely discussed within the bourgeoning
antiwar movement, which noted the hypocrisy of selecting the
general to lead a "liberated" Iraq. The gist of my
story was that his arrest in Denmark was a setback for the Powell
camp within the Bush administration, and a plus for the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz
cabal that favored convicted swindler and long-time Iraqi exile
Ahmad Chalabi as postwar satrap in Iraq. (Chalabi, of course,
is despised by the State Department and CIA.) In any case, Khazraji
did not face Danish justice, but while taking a walk and a smoke
March 15, 2003, five days before the U.S. assault on his country,
disappeared. His son Ahmad al-Khazraji reported him missing on
March 17.
Family members expressed concern that
Iraqi agents had abducted him, a singularly unlikely scenario.
The Danish press more plausibly alleged that CIA agents had busted
him out; the newspaper BT reported that he had been spirited
to Saudi Arabia from whence he could help plan U.S. and British
attacks on Kirkuk. The Telegraph reported March 23 that,
"According to Iraqi exiles in Jordan, the US is using Nazar
Khazraji, a former Iraqi army chief of staff who defected in
1996, to help secure the defection of senior army officers. Gen
Khazraji is said to be playing a key role in contacting officers
and persuading them to turn against Saddam."
The Danish government issued an order
for Khazraji's arrest and all-points bulletin on Khazraji via
Interpol. It said it would demand his extradition from any country
where he might be located. Danish Justice Minister Lene Espersen
felt obliged to officially request of U.S. Ambassador Stuart
A. Bernstein an investigation into possible prior American knowledge
of Khazraji's disappearance. The embassy denied any such knowledge.
But where was Khazraji, in the weeks following his departure?
His son in Denmark suggested that he might have gone to Hungary
to work with exiled Iraqi soldiers assembled there by the U.S.
A Kurdish
news website reported on April 11 that he was in the Kurdish
city of Suleimaniyya, but other reports placed him in Saudi
Arabia and Turkey. The Danish press reported he was in the Union
of Arab Emirates or Kuwait. The London-based Saudi newspaper
Al-Shaq al-Awsat suggested Kurdistan, the Iranian news
bureau IRNA, Qatar. Albawaba.com reported that the CIA had taken
Khazraji to Kuwait. Julie Flint, of the Institute for War and
Peace Reporting, reported that Khazraji was sighted "in
Turkey, northern Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia" in March
and April.
Complicating matters, Arab News
and al-Jazeera reported that Khazraji had been assassinated on
April 10, in the holy city of Najaf, outside the Ali Mosque,
his body hacked to death to angry Shiites along with that of
Islamic scholar Abdul Majid Al-Khoei, in an incident that also
claimed the lives of a U.S. Special Forces bodyguard and three
others. Khazraji and Khoei were supposed to have been en route
to a U.S.-sponsored meeting with opposition leaders in Nassiriya.
But while the report of Al-Khoei's death was confirmed, that
of Khazraji was not. Later Arab
press accounts stated he had been killed, but not in the
Najaf incident
Meanwhile, on April 11, Danish police
tapped a telephone call from Khazraji to the mobile phone of
his son, in the Sorø apartment, perhaps from Mosul; the
evidence was presented to the Sorø Municipal Court.
On April 16 Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported
that the family had left the Copenhagen suburb; they have relocated
to Norway. On April 23 the Copenhagen Post indicated that
Khazraji was presumably alive, in northern Iraq. On May 21, the
Danish newspaper Politics quoted his son as stating that,
while he was not personally in touch with his father, "we
have learnt" from "trustworthy persons" that "he
is in Iraq and he is in a good health condition and he is involved
in politics."
Web-surfing suggests there has been very
little reportage on the Khazraji story in the last eight months.
It seems likely to me that the 65 year old general is alive and
working with U.S. forces, although he is not the neocon's favorite
and, given his international outlaw status, may be kept under
wraps for the time being, even though he enjoys some support
among members of the puppet Iraq Governing Council. (Last April
Adnan Pachachi, asked by the Dubai-based Gulf News if
a high-ranking appointment might go to the general, replied,
"Why not?") Some have suggested that Khazraji facilitated
the quick collapse of the Iraqi military during "Operation
Iraqi Freedom," and that he retains important connections
among the disbanded Iraqi officer corps. Just thinking aloud
here, but I wonder: should the Bushites' plans for a "restoration
of sovereignty" to Iraq by June (or whenever) go sour (as
seems likely), and civil war ensue, Khazraji might be the man
to straighten out the mess the State Department attributes to
Defense Department blundering.
But why am I writing about this now,
since there's been no recent news about Khazraji? Because I read
an interesting article in the Independent
(February 8) by Raymond Whitaker and Kim Sengupta about the collapse
of Tony Blair's "45 minute case." It attributes the
allegation that Saddam was 45 minutes away from launching a chemical
or biological attack on western interests (actually it now seems
the allegation pertained only to battlefield mortar shells or
small caliber weaponry) to "an Iraqi exile who had left
the country several years previously," "a serving officer
in the Iraqi army, with the rank either of full colonel or brigadier,"
who was in Iraq during the 1991 war but then "fled, possibly
to Scandinavia." Jack Straw told Parliament the man was
not a defector but "an established and reliable source"
who had been "reporting to us secretly for some years."
He had "military knowledge," and maintained contacts
with serving officers in Saddam Hussein's armed forces. "The
fate of the officer who provided the information," according
to the Independent, "remains a mystery. There are rumours
that he is dead or missing."
Now, this description doesn't fit Khazraji
to a T, since he is commonly described as a defector.
But he has been a maverick, declining to participate in Iraqi
exile leaders' meetings, and anyway, isn't an Iraqi officer who
"fled" and subsequently provided intelligence information
to western governments a defector by definition? "Brigadier"
in British usage could refer to a lieutenant general, and the
other details also pan out. So I wondered if maybe Khazraji might
be the mystery man, and if so, having served the cause of bringing
Britain into a war which might yet propel him into power, might
yet serve the Anglo-American occupation by employing his connections
in the humiliatingly demobilized Iraqi Army, and applying his
sternly methodical violence to bring order to the chaos invasion
has unleashed in his country.
It is highly odd that the man whom Bush
administration officials told Seymour Hersh in March 2002 was
the "CIA's brightest prospect" for Iraq, who reportedly
was serviceable to the invaders last spring, and who is probably
still alive (despite interesting reports of his demise) is not
the subject of discussion. Thus this submitted, merely to encourage
such discussion and investigation.
Gary Leupp
is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor
of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa, Japan,
Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900
and Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa, Japan
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for February 14 / 15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|