A Reminder: The US Helped Arm Iraq

[grandpa]

According to a US Senate Committee Report in 1994, from 1985 (if not earlier) to 1989, the US supplied Iraq with the following:

Bacillus Anthracis (cause of anthrax).
Clostridium Botulinum (a source of botulinum toxin).
Histoplasma Capsulatam (cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord and heart).
Brucella Melitensis (a bacteria that can damage major organs).
Clotsridium Perfringens (a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness).
Clostridium tetani (highly toxigenic).

The report also stated that ‘these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program.’ (‘U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War,’ Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration, reports of May 25, 1994 and October 7, 1994)

In addition to this, Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million of pesticides to Iraq which could be used as chemical warfare agents (December 1988).

regarding this matter, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy wrote, "The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is ... important to our long-term political and economic objectives ."

Grandpa h.

[Gods_Mercenary]

At the time we viewed Saddam as the lesser of two evils, and, if not for Saddam's bumling, our help would have easily helped him crush Iran in the first part of the war, instead of haaving it last for an innordinate amount of time and benefit no one, much less U.S. interests in the area. I would question arming him with poison, which is of less military value than, say, tanks or rifles or covert training. Of course, by the end, Iran was depending upon the ability to throw waves of fanatics at Saddams troops, so there an agent which could kill many people quickly is of obvious use for Saddam, but he just ended up using it on his own people. Once Saddam failed to take advantage of his gains at the beginning of the war support should have been withdrawn, instead of allowing it to continue to the verge of genocide.

[grandpa]

At the time we viewed Saddam as the lesser of
two evils, and, if not for Saddam's bumling, our help
would have easily helped him crush Iran in the first
part of the war, instead of haaving it last for
an innordinate amount of time and benefit no one, much
less U.S. interests in the area.
I would question arming him with poison, which is of
less military value than, say, tanks or rifles or covert
training.

Of course, the "lesser of two evils" angle is always on standby.
If you think about it, the argument that AK - 47s are better than WMD's is its own kind of "lesser of two evils" argument, and people do make such arguments.
That moronic principle could be applied to UZBEKISTAN right now, a country the US supports with a human rights abuses record that easily rivals Saddam Hussein's regime (according to Human Rights Watch, they even boil people alive--I wouldn't doubt it, seeing as to how no form of cruelty is too far away from statecraft).

Given the idiotic nature of the state-capitalist system, people will likely only stop supporting such abuses when money is lost from siding with evil (though maybe I'm overlooking sadism as a factor all by itself).

Grandpa h.

[Gods_Mercenary]

No form of cruelty is far away from human nature, gramps. I would think money has been lost, we haven't gotten much of a return with Saddam, considering he ended up being our enemy.

[Athena]

At the time we viewed Saddam as the lesser of two evils, and, if not for Saddam's bumling, our help would have easily helped him crush Iran in the first part of the war, instead of haaving it last for an innordinate amount of time and benefit no one, much less U.S. interests in the area. I would question arming him with poison, which is of less military value than, say, tanks or rifles or covert training. Of course, by the end, Iran was depending upon the ability to throw waves of fanatics at Saddams troops, so there an agent which could kill many people quickly is of obvious use for Saddam, but he just ended up using it on his own people. Once Saddam failed to take advantage of his gains at the beginning of the war support should have been withdrawn, instead of allowing it to continue to the verge of genocide.

I think we need to know about the past, because what you said is lacking the reality of what the US and Britian have to do with the mess we are in.

Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S. helped midwife a terrorist

By Ahmed Rashid

In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures. He had persuaded the US Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes and provide US advisers to train the guerrillas. Until then, no US-made weapons or personnel had been used directly in the war effort.

The CIA, Britain's MI6 and the ISI [PakistanÕs Inter-Services Intelligence] also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in Afghanistan received their supplies. The task was given to the ISI's favourite Mujaheddin leader, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. In March 1987, small units crossed the Amu Darya river from bases in northern Afghanistan and launched their first rocket attacks against villages in Tajikistan. Casey was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with [the late Pakistani] President Zia [ul-Haq] to review the Mujaheddin groups.

Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982, and by now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea. President Zia aimed to cement Islamic unity, turn Pakistan into the leader of the Muslim world and foster an Islamic opposition in Central Asia. Washington wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was fighting the Soviet Union alongside the Afghans and their American benefactors. And the Saudis saw an opportunity both to promote Wahabbism [their strict and austere Wahabbi creed] and to get rid of its disgruntled radicals. None of the players reckoned on these volunteers having their own agendas, which would eventually turn their hatred against the Soviets on their own regimes and the Americans......

A young Bin Laden

. . . Among these thousands of foreign recruits was a young Saudi student, Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Yemeni construction magnate, Mohammed Bin Laden, who was a close friend of the late King Faisal and whose company had become fabulously wealthy on the contracts to renovate and expand the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. The ISI had long wanted Prince Turki Bin Faisal, the head of Istakhbarat, the Saudi Intelligence Service, to provide a Royal Prince to lead the Saudi contingent in order to show Muslims the commitment of the Royal Family to the jihad. Only poorer Saudis, students, taxi drivers and Bedouin tribesmen had so far arrived to fight. But no pampered Saudi prince was ready to rough it out in the Afghan mountains. Bin Laden, although not a royal, was close enough to the royals and certainly wealthy enough to lead the Saudi contingent. Bin Laden, Prince Turki and General Gut were to become firm friends and allies in a common cause.

The centre for the Arab-Afghans [Filipino Moros, Uzbeks from Soviet Central Asia, Arabs from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and Uighurs from Xinjiang in China who had all come to fight with the Mujaheddin] was the offices of the World Muslim League and the Muslim Brotherhood in the northern Pakistan city of Peshawar. The center was run by Abdullah Azam, a Jordanian Palestinian whom Bin Laden had first met at university in Jeddah and revered as his leader. Azam and his two sons were assassinated by a bomb blast in Peshawar in 1989.

During the 1980s, Azam had forged close links with Hikmetyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the Afghan Islamic scholar, whom the Saudis had sent to Peshawar to promote Wahabbism. Saudi funds flowed to Azam and the Makhtab at Khidmat or Services Center, which he created in 1984 to service the new recruits and receive donations from Islamic charities. Donations from Saudi Intelligence, the Saudi Red Crescent, the World Muslim League and private donations from Saudi princes and mosques were channelled through the Makhtab. A decade later, the Makhtab would emerge at the center of a web of radical organizations that helped carry out the World Trade Center bombing and the bombings of US embassies in Africa in 1998.

[Athena]

It would be great if we used better facts to discuss what is happening today.

http://www.utwatch.org/archives/pole...tuspolicy.html

The roots of the Central Command can be traced to the "Carter doctrine", established in January 1980, which pledged that the U.S. would "use any means necessary, including military force" to ensure "the free movement of Middle Eastern oil" and created the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) for intervention in the Third World. But when Ronald Reagan took office one year later, the American military presence in the Middle East was still relatively undeveloped.

The Reagan administration in the early '80s dramatically expanded the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, focusing it on the Middle East and, specifically, the Persian Gulf. Martha Wenger (Middle East Reports, November-December 1984) reported that the "U.S. Central Command [was] created January 1, 1983 as the heir of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force. Central Command controls a territory that had long been divided between the European and Pacific Commands: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, North and South Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea/northern Indian Ocean."

[Chancellor]

According to a US Senate Committee Report in 1994, from 1985 (if not earlier) to 1989, the US supplied Iraq with the following:

Bacillus Anthracis (cause of anthrax).
Clostridium Botulinum (a source of botulinum toxin).
Histoplasma Capsulatam (cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord and heart).
Brucella Melitensis (a bacteria that can damage major organs).
Clotsridium Perfringens (a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness).
Clostridium tetani (highly toxigenic).

The report also stated that ‘these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program.’ (‘U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War,’ Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration, reports of May 25, 1994 and October 7, 1994)

In addition to this, Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million of pesticides to Iraq which could be used as chemical warfare agents (December 1988).

regarding this matter, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy wrote, "The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is ... important to our long-term political and economic objectives ."

Grandpa h.

The reason the United States knew Saddam Hussein was lying about the WMDs was because we sold them to him. So, I expect all you leftists and socialists who have been crying "Bush lied, people died" to publicly apologize for saying the Bush administration was lying about the WMDs.

[Chancellor]

It's this kind of involvement in the Middle East since the 1950s that inspired Al Qaeda to retaliate against the United States on 9/11.

[Gods_Mercenary]

Agreed, but we were talking about Iraq and Saddam, not Al Queida or CentCom, Athena, though we do seem to arm our future enemies a lot.

[Nono]

I expect all you leftists and socialists who have been crying "Bush lied, people died" to publicly apologize for saying the Bush administration was lying about the WMDs.

Did Bush (and his step'n'fetch-it lackeys like Colin Powell) not claim that Iraq's weapons programme constituted a threat to US security that couldn't even wait for UN inspectors (who turned out to be right, unlike Boy George) to spend a month taking a closer look?

Give us a break, Ch.

And don't forget how Bush had Americans (still has, pathetically) believing that Saddam was behind 911.

Bush lied, alright. In fact the murderous little bugger just can't stop.

[Gods_Mercenary]

Well, he got caught in his first one, and he made a second one, and so on.

[Chancellor]

Did Bush (and his step'n'fetch-it lackeys like Colin Powell) not claim that Iraq's weapons programme constituted a threat to US security that couldn't even wait for UN inspectors (who turned out to be right, unlike Boy George) to spend a month taking a closer look?

Yes, but they said that because they knew the quality of the weapons the American government sold to him. You really don't understand American foreign policy over the last 50-60 years if you are questioning this. America has a long history of supporting shady characters and putting them into power and then turning against them when they stray from kow-towing to American interests.

Give us a break, Ch.

See above.

And don't forget how Bush had Americans (still has, pathetically) believing that Saddam was behind 911.

Well, that was a really stupid thing for him to do.

Bush lied, alright. In fact the murderous little bugger just can't stop.

But he didn't lie about the WMDs, which is what he was being criticized for.