Sina Ali Musati claimed he did it as a distraction from the Monica Lewinsky scandal - which was then at its height

journal published claims by a Canadian law student about the 1998 bombing Bill Clinton ordered in Iraq

An article in the Muslim journal where Huma Abedin was assistant editor claimed Bill Clinton bombed Saddam Hussein to deflect from his Monica Lewinsky affair.

The claim made made in an article published in the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, where Abedin was a member of the editorial board - the group of people who decide what is published in the academic journal.

It is the latest bombshell to emerge from the archives of the journal, whose editor-in-chief is Abedin's mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, an academic in Saudi Arabia.

Abedin, who is not an academic, has been Hillary Clinton's closest aide since spending time as an intern at the White House, at exactly the time the Monica Lewinsky scandal was unfolding.

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Affair: Bill Clinton's 'not appropriate' relationship with Monica Lewinsky led to his impeachment - and as the House moved towards the articles, he ordered airstrikes on Iraq

Strike: An Arleigh Burke-class destroyer launches a Tomahawk cruise missile as part of Operation Desert Fox - which Abedin's journal says was ordered to distract from Bill Clinton's scandals

Address: Bill Clinton used an Oval Office address to tell the nation of the airstrikes on the Saddam regime, to degrade his alleged ability to produce weapons of mass destruction

But the version of events published in her journal is one which is unlikely to be embraced by the presidential candidate, and especially not by Bill Clinton.

It is outlined in a provocative article published in 2002, and headlined: 'Arab/Muslim 'Otherness': The Role of Racial Constructions in the Gulf War and the Continuing Crisis with Iraq.'

The article was written by Sina Ali Muscati who was the time described as a 'second year law student' at the University of Ottawa. His academic credentials were not declared.

Key role: Huma Abedin, like her sister and brother, was a member of the editorial board of the journal and therefore responsible for selection what was published

Muscati wrote about the 1991 conflict and its aftermath, which saw Saddam Hussein remain in power throughout the 1990s, despite being bombed twice - in 1996 and in December 1998.

'The crisis with Iraq has also probably benefited Clinton, serving as a good deterrent of attention from personal crises, such as his campaign funding scandals, legislative failures, or the Monica Lewinsky affair,' he said.

'By occasionally bombing Iraq in the name of humanity, at least, he has been able to look strong and presidential.'

Clinton's bombing of Iraq in December 1998 was widely mocked as 'Monica's war'.

He ordered four days of strikes by bombers and cruise missiles at the height of his impeachment trial, brought in the wake of his admission that he had had a 'not appropriate' relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

The strikes - known as Operation Desert Fox- were ordered the day after the House of Representatives issued a report accusing the president of 'high crimes and misdemeanors' and ended on the day the articles of impeachment were passed.

Previous strikes in 1996, Operation Desert Strike, were ordered during a campaign finance scandal.

Among the other allegations leveled in the article are claims that the Gulf War of 1991 was driven by a desire for profits and political gain, with the U.S. government and media glossing over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis who were 'demonized' and 'characterized as subhuman'.

The article claimed that President George HW Bush, who ordered the invasion by a U.S.-led coalition force, saw his support rating jump nearly 90 per cent following the war. In fact he was voted out of office after his first term.

Dictator: Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein was the target of the 1998 Operation Desert Fox. The journal's article also claims that the U.S. should not have backed Kuwait when he invaded it in 1990

Same roles: Both Huma (with husband Anthony Weiner) and her sister Heba Abedin were assistant editors at the journal, while their brother Hassan was associate editor.

At her side: Huma Abedin with Hillary Clinton. The journal, where hse was on the editorial board before she was appointed as Clinton's top aide, has opposed women's rights and blamed the US for 9/11

The 2002 article claimed that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died 'directly from the war, from subsequent civil strife, or from the American and British enforced UN sanctions'.

It goes on: 'Following the Gulf War, Iraqi rebellions publicly urged by the then President [HW] George Bush, but which received no American support, led to tens of thousands more Iraqis killed or made homeless by their army, almost under the noses of retreating American troops.

'Subsequent sanctions have led to even more Iraqi deaths, including over 600,000 Iraqi children alone.'

The journal article said that Iraqis were viewed with a 'racist outlook' and described in the media, by the U.S. government and military in terms including 'cockroaches' and 'barbaric', pitting Muslims and Arabs as evil against a humanitarian Western force.

The article also questioned the motives behind the 1991 Gulf War – suggesting that the real reason was to protect American access to Middle Eastern oil and not for the liberation of Kuwait, as the U.S. government had claimed.

'Indeed, it seems that had Iraq not been an Arab and Muslim country occupying huge oil reserves, the Gulf War would have been unacceptable,' it reads.

In the article's view, 'Saddam Hussein seems to have paid a great service to the West.'

'Gulf oil reserves were brought under greater Western control, the glory of American military might was assured, lucrative arms sales increased, and Western leaders were popularized.

'Moreover, the costs fell mainly on the Iraqi people, who were largely the ones to pay the price of blood.'

The article openly accused the U.S. of double standards in claiming that Saddam Hussein was a 'brutal aggressor' for invading its neighbors – while the U.S. had been condemned by the United Nations for its own invasions of Grenada and Panama in the 1980s.

'In fact the Panama invasion claimed between 1000 and 4000 lives, making it even bloodier than Iraq's invasion of Kuwait,' according to the article.

The article also appeared to defend Saddam's decision to invade: 'Kuwait's economic policies were far more damaging to Iraq than Panama's were to the US.'

It also questioned why the U.S. ignored what it claimed was the historical conflict between Iraq and Kuwait to serve its own ends – and why America would take the side of Kuwait in the first place.

Hillary pictured with Saleha Mahmood Abedin, mother of Huma, at a women's college in Jeddah in 2010. She remains editor-in-chief of the journal

'Another purported objective of the war, preserving peace and liberty in Kuwait, makes little sense. Kuwait is a dictatorship with a poor human rights record. It abolished its parliament shortly before the Iraqi invasion to become an absolute monarchy, leaving little freedom to defend there.'

The article also alleged further hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. and Israel who had focused on Arab/Muslim conflict when they 'have done nothing' to restore the Palestinian rights demanded by the UN Security Council.

It also criticized U.S. journalists who 'frequently refer to occupied Palestinian land as 'disputed' territory, as US diplomats do'.

The article suggests that the American people were hoodwinked into supporting war with Iraq due to the media and were 'convinced that Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat'.

At the time of publication, Abedin was an aide to Clinton, who was then the junior senator for New York.

That same year Clinton voted in favor of giving her husband's successor, George W Bush, authority to declare war on Hussein. Clinton has also been consistently pro-Israel.

Family: Huma Abedin is married to disgraced sex pest congressman and failed would-be New York mayor Anthony Weiner

The journal is heavily associated with the Abedin family.

The editorial board - the group who decided on the contents - included Huma's mother as editor-in-chief, her brother Hassan as associate editor and her sister Heba as another assistant editor.

The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Abedin's role at the journal or whether she was paid for her position.

Huma Abedin was listed on the journal's masthead for more than a decade after she joined Clinton's team in 1996, rising from White House intern to one of the presidential nominee's closest confidantes.

She is a likely pick for chief of staff in a Clinton administration.

Abedin, who is married to disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner, who is Jewish, has denied having a working role on the Journal of Minority Muslim Affairs.

Her name first appeared on the magazine in 1996 and was dropped in 2008 around the time she went to work for Clinton at the State Department.

'My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that period. She did not play a role in editing at the publication,' a Clinton spokesman told the New York Post earlier this week.

That claim appears contradicted by her presence on the editorial board. Abedin herself rarely makes public statements, although she used an interview with Vogue - whose editor Anna Wintour is a vocal Clinton supporter - to speak of her Muslim faith and fluency in Arabic.

The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs' contents often appear to be at odds Clinton's avowed positions on feminism, homophobia and Middle Eastern policy.

An earlier article published in the academic Islamic journal also alleged that there were deep ties between the upper echelons of U.S. politics and pro-Israeli, Jewish-Americans, suggesting that Jewish people have been able to 'work the system' and are 'greatly aided by the American memory of the Holocaust' and Israel serving as America's ally in the Middle East.