WHAT MADNESS IS SEIZING MESSRS CLINTON AND BLAIR TODAY?
By Robert Fisk THE INDEPENDENT (London, UK) February 12 1998 I have been reminded of some familiar odours these past few days. The first is the terrible, nauseous stench I endured for hours on the overnight train from Ahwaz to Tehran back in the Eighties, as I shared a carriage with dozens of young Iranian soldiers. All of them were coughing up Saddam Hussein’s poisons from their lungs into blood-red swabs and bandages. And the mustard gas that was slowly killing them permeated the whole great 20-carriage train as it thundered up from the desert battlefields of the first Gulf War, through the mountains to the city where almost all these men would soon die and be buried. After only an hour into the journey, I was forced to throw open the carriage window to avoid vomiting. No sooner had I filed a series of reports to London on this new and terrible war crime of Saddam Hussein than a British diplomat, lunching with one of my editors in London, remarked that “Bob doesn’t seem to understand
