A Gulf War POW Accuses the
United States and Britain of Being Hypocritical about Saddam
MSNBC
September 27, 2002
John Nichol knows all about the brutality of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. As
a 27-year-old navigator for Britain's Royal Air Force during the 1991
Persian Gulf War, he was shot down over the Iraqi desert during the
first
low-level daylight raid of the war.
HE AND HIS PILOT ejected safely, but were captured by the Iraqis.
During the next seven weeks, he was beaten, tortured and paraded before
the television cameras to denounce his country's attack on Saddam.
Since leaving the RAF in 1996, Nichol has launched a second career as
a writer. He now has six books in print; a seventh, "The Last Escape,"
is to be published in Britain next month. As the debate over an attack
on
Iraq gains urgency-100,000 protestors are expected to join an antiwar
march
in London this weekend-Nichol has emerged as a forthright critic of a
U.S.-British strike against Saddam.
He spoke to NEWSWEEK's William Underhill in London:
NEWSWEEK: You were held captive and tortured by agents of Saddam
Hussein's regime. Why do you now oppose military intervention to secure
his overthrow?
John Nichol: One reason why the West, and Britain and the United
States in particular, are in such a difficult position is that they
seem to think that they can cherry-pick regimes that are bad and need to
be
changed.
We deal with bad regimes on a daily basis: we deal with Iran, we deal
with Saudi Arabia, which has a truly appalling record on human rights,
but
we don't talk about regime change there. America and Britain can't set
themselves up as the world policemen without a mandate from the world.
Q. Would you agree to an intervention if it were sanctioned by the
United Nations?
A. If it were sanctioned and supported. There is a very real difference
between the two. A huge amount of bribery, arm-twisting and coercion
goes on at the U.N. I am not naive enough to think that doesn't have to
happen, but there is a difference between Britain and the U.S.
forcing through a resolution and the rest of the world actually agreeing
to it. What
would turn the issue for me is if the Arab countries of the region said,
"We
feel threatened by Saddam Hussein, could you help us?"-which is what
they
did in 1991.
Q. Prime Minister Tony Blair this week produced a dossier of evidence
to support the case for military action. Why weren't you persuaded?
A. It did reinforce the notion that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime
have an appalling record for human rights, that he has weapons of mass
destruction and seeks more weapons of mass destruction. But I could
name 10 other countries in the region whose names you could substitute
for
Iraq's in that dossier. Iraq is a war waiting for a pretext and that is
what the
dossier is trying to provide. There was nothing new in it. There was
evidence for all those allegations five, 10 or 15 years ago-when we
were still doing business with Iraq.
Q. Is that why you have accused Britain and America of hypocrisy in
their attitude to Iraq?
A. Many countries have shown a degree of hypocrisy. But Britain and
America are particularly bad. We trained Iraqi armed forces. Our
special forces were in Baghdad training their special forces. We trained
pilots
in the Royal Air Force to fly aircraft and drop bombs. We gave Saddam
Hussein the technology and the material to produce his weapons of mass
destruction, and it's simply not good enough to say: "Well, we have
changed our mind about this."
It is that duplicity which puts us in such a difficult position. The
classic example is the attack at Halabjah in 1988 when 5,000 Kurds were
killed [in a chemical attack by Iraqi forces].
Every single politician from [President] Bush and [Secretary of
Defense Donald] Rumsfeld to Blair stands up on television and says
"Saddam Hussein gassed his own people and is a disgrace to the world."
But
America sent representatives from [major U.S. companies] for a personal
audience with Saddam Hussein one year after the attack.
Q. Do you feel any animosity towards the people of Iraq after your
experiences as a POW?
A. I feel absolutely no animosity towards the Iraqis. War is an
appalling, brutal experience which I have been through on a couple of
occasions. Members of the general public and even politicians seem to
forget that. They think that war can be waged by computer, by cruise
missile,
by laser-guided bomb. It can't be. Yes, I had some brutal treatment at
the
hands of some Iraqi people. I was kept in a tiny concrete cell with no
bed, no cups, nothing. You were just alone there with your thoughts. But
these things happen in war and, more important, 99.9 percent of Iraqis
are
good honest people. I went back to Iraq 18 months ago and was welcomed
by
everybody there.
Q. As an ex-serviceman, how do you think the armed forces will react to
being sent to fight in Iraq without the full support of the public?
A. The members of our armed forces are professional people. They will
do exactly what their commanders in chief tell them to do because that
is
their job. That's doesn't mean some of them won't have misgivings. The
views
of the armed forces are just the same as you will read in every
newspaper
or hear in every TV show. But there is something really important here.
Politicians say we can't criticize our armed forces when they are in
action, but that doesn't means we can't criticize the policies that put
them in
that position. I particularly remember when I was flying over Bosnia
being
shot at by all three sides-Serbs, Muslims and Croats-and wanting someone
to
question the government policy on what we are doing.
Q. What has been the lasting effect of your captivity?
A. People always look at an appalling experience and say, "My God I
couldn't go though that." But it was only seven weeks. It was a
horrible seven weeks, a brutal seven weeks-but only seven weeks. I came
home and tragically some of my friends didn't come home. So in that way
I am
incredibly lucky. I suppose what the gulf war showed me-as it was my
first war-was the brutal reality of war. That doesn't mean war isn't
sometimes necessary, but when you see it at first hand you view with
suspicion politicians who are so ready to wield the military stick.
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