veiled4allah: no matter how you look at it, this is sick

I first posted this in my comments here and here about a week ago. There are two contradictory articles, America Didn't Seem to Mind Poison Gas from the International Herald Tribune and War Crime or Act of War? from the New York Times (registration required).

According to to the New York Times article, the gassing of the Kurds at Halabja was done by Iran not Iraq. As I said in my comments:

This leaves open a lot of questions. Assuming that U.S. intelligence has proved that Iran did it (as the author claims), why in the world is Bush claiming that Iraq did it and using this as a justification for making war on Iraq? The moral depravity of such an action is shocking. On the other hand, maybe Bush knows that the intelligence report is not correct, in which case U.S. intelligence has made up a horrific lie against Iran in order to direct world attention away from what Iraq did when it was our client.

The "made up a horrific lie against Iran" is the theme of the International Herald Tribune article. I tend to believe that Iraq did it. I don't think that the Bush Administration would go so far as to blame Iraq for something that they knew Iran did. That's just too sickening. Of course, the fact that some intelligence officials are slandering Iran over genocide for political gain is just as sickening.

At first, nothing further came of what I posted in my comments but today I came across some further resources on this story, by way of The Road to Surfdom. Here's a rebuttal of the NY Times article (more specifically of its author). You can also read the reports on Halabja from Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch as well as a column from the New Yorker, The Great Terror.

Antiwar blogger Jim Henley discusses whether making war on Iraq is the correct solution or if it will only bring us down towards Saddam Hussein's level.

Update 2/11: An article by Robin Miller, Claims of Saddam's Genocide Far From Proven, supports the intelligence claim that Iran rather than Iraq was behind Halabja. This article also presents evidence the author believes shows that there was no genocide at Halabja. According to Miller, this is the actual claim of U.S. intelligence, although the other articles I read didn't make this point clear. If, as Miller asserts, no genocide occurred at Halabja then U.S. intelligence is cleared of slandering Iran. But it would still be true that the Bush Administration is slandering Iraq and using a false claim to justify war on Iraq. Read Miller's article for yourself and see what you think.