How dare anyone critisise the US for Liberating Iraq. (A few things about Iraq and Iran)

Quote from "Why Nations go to War" by John G. Stoessinger. Chapter 8

"Of all the people who parade through the pages of this book, I believe that only three are absolutely evil: Adolf Hitler, [whom Stoessinger was a Jew persecuted by the Nazis] Saddam Hussein, and Slobodan Milosevic. Why not Stalin, one might ask? Although his crimes were horrendous, he did not love war for its own sake as Hitler, Saddam, and Milosevic. The latter three men were classic war lovers. Like a Vampire, the war lover feeds on the blood of the living. He thrives on the lives of the innocents, like the young Iraqi and Iranian soldiers who carried their own coffins to the front during their eight-year war. The war lover needs war without end in order to feel like a man. And only when he dies or is slain does liberation come...."

"When Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979, he ordered the construction of a statue of himself, sixty feet high, in military posture, arms outstretched in salute. Soon thereafter, thousands of portraits of the 'maximum leader' made their appearance on buildings, and in lobbies, coffeehouses, and supermarkets. The Iraqi press spoke of him as 'the awaited, the promissed one.' An orphan who had learned the craft of assassination at the knee of a merderous uncle in an obscure Iraqi village had become president-for-life of his nation."

"...After the photograph was taken, he ordered the execution of twenty-one cabinet members, including one of his closest friends, on dubious charges of treason. 'He who is closest to me is farthes from me when he does wrong,' he explained. Soon thereafter, he took the other cabinent ministers down to Baghdad's central prison to serve as the firing squad for a number of political prisoners. 'It was to ensure loyalty through common guilt,' commented a British official who witnessed the scene. Saddam's secret police were everywhere and torture was common place. It meant death to speak against the 'father-leader.' And it was a crime to own a typewriter without police permission. A new gestapo was alive and well in Iraq, thirty-five years after the demise of the original model in Nazi Germany."

"The war launched by Saddam against Iran in September 1980 became one of the most ferocious conflicts of the century."

"In an era when military thinking was dominated by nuclear weapons or guerrilla warfare, the Iran-Iraq War recalled the trench battles of an earlier age. The Iranians mounted costly human-wave assaults against Iraq, whose troops were entrenched behind tanks and artillery. Iraq even resorted to the use of poison gas, banned by international conventions after World War I. And again, as in 1914, neither side could make a decisive breakthrough. After eight years of maneuvers and confrontations up and down the winding 700-mile boundary between the two countries, the battle lines returned almost exactly to their original borders. Like Britain, France and Germany in 1918, Iran and Iraq lost a generation of their best young men."

"On the Iranian side, an obsession with martyrdom helped sustain the war's popularity despite enormous casualties. In the martyrs' cemetery outside Tehran, a fountain of blood reminded the visitors of the fallen heroes. Though only colored water, it was chillingly realistic. The visitors stood among row upon row, acre after acre, of graves."

"Later in the war, when the Iranian army began to run out of men, thousands of teenage boys were recruited by the Shi'ite clergy to clearn battlefields of mines and barbed wire. Their tickets to paradise were bloodred headbands reading "Warrior of God" and small metal keys signifying that the ayatollah had given them special permission to enter heaven.

One last snipet from this long chapter and then I'll leave this thread for discussion by the sickening Bush bashers.

"On March 12, 1938, as a boy of ten, I watched Hitler's motorcade enter Vienna, my hometown. Three days later, I heard his shrill, rasping voice on Austrian radio: "As the F�hrer and Chancellor of the German Nation and the Reich, I now declare before history the incorporation of my native land into the German Reich." The Anschluss was complete. Henceforth my homeland was to be known as Ostmark, a province of the German Reich.
"Exactly one year later, on March 15, 1939, I saw Hitler's tanks enter Prague, where we had gone after having fled Vienna. 'Chechoslovakia has ceased to exist,' Hitler proclaimed from Hradcany Castle. 'It is now the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, part of German Lebensraum.'
"Neither Britain nor France nor the United States made the slightest effort to save either Austria or Czechoslovakia. Consequently, on September 1, 1939, an emboldened Hitler attacked Poland. The German F�hrer called his invasion a 'counterattack.' 'The poles fired first,' he insisted, and the German move was a 'defensive action.' World War II had begun.
"More than half a century later, on August 2, 1990, quite by coincidence, I found myself on a tour bus in Turkey, near the Iraqi border. Suddenly the tour guide interrupted her routine travelogue and announced in a strained voice, 'Iraq has just invaded Kuwait; please do not be agitated, you have nothing to fear.' My neighbor, a Turkish businessman, turned to me and asked, 'Saddam is like Hitler. Will you Americans stop him?' 'I hope so,' I replied, 'I remember Hitler. It's deja vu.'"

Now that I think you have sufficient reasons why we should have liberated Iraq, why Bush is right regardless of the Weapons of Mass Destruction, I wonder if you can honestly bother to defend your attacks against US actions in Iraq.

Can anyone support the criticism that Michael Moore, or Al Qaeda display against the United State's nearly Unilateral action?

Since the UN would not take up this responsibility against a "truly evil man", then we did it ourselves. And we should be thought none the lesser for it.

i still criticize bush. saddam may have been evil, but the US... hell, practically the same administration... propped him up. we said nothing when he actually USED the chemical weapons, which were made with the assistance of US companies... and we said nothing, indeed we supported him, when he invaded Iran and started that whole awful war...and now all of a sudden the US decides to do the right thing? am i honestly supposed to believe that the whole bush cabinet suddenly decided to repent for earlier sins?

-koji K.

I suggest you actually try to support your stupid claims. This book covers all aspects of the US involvement with Iraq and Iran during their war, and it's far from what you're imagining.

Also, Iraq produced its own Chemical weapons, in fact it was using chlorine gas, which it has the capacity to make because chlorine is used in water-purification so no one could deny them the right to purify their own water to make it potable.

And contrary to your ignorance, we actually supported Iran when the Iraq-Iran war first began, we even sold them F-11 bombers.

It was only when Iran began to win, that we realized the threat Iran posed to surrounding nations and the balance of power (since Iran bordered the Soviets they were more apt to side with them) that we decided it would be bad to let Iran dominate that whole region.

Also George W. Bush had nothing to do with this, this was entirely during the Reagan Administration, Bush and his father both wanted to remove Saddam from power entirely. The UN stopped George H.W. Bush, but this time we acted with out them.

Koji, all you managed to do was spout your mouth off, from now on present the facts. I'm currently using just one of 3 good books about this very thing, and I believe that with your post, this one book is sufficient in completely debunking you.

After all with the Soviet Union still existing the United States did not have the luxury to choose sides based on Morality, it had to choose sides that would best help bring the destruction of the Soviet Union.

FreeMason - I'm sorry, I didn't know this was the mudpit? I just love the respect you show your fellow posters. If they are not in awe at the feet of George W. Bush, they are Bush-bashers or idiots who "spout their mouths off". It's a typical tactic of the neocons - if someone dare express criticism, shout them down by attacking their character as a person.

First of all, one book doesn't prove everything. Remember the old Latin proverb? "Testis unus, testis nullus". One witness, no witness. It's also why historians, when they assess an event, don't resort to a single source, and any history student who does so will get an "F".

I'm not saying your book is wrong. I'm saying it's a theory, but by itself it's not a proof.

Also... There is such a thing as freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and people - Americans or otherwise - have the right to criticize President Bush or American policy without being ordered to shut up. If you deny them that... it makes you a fascist.

D'uh Otts, you think I have read one book and become Moses coming down from the mountain? Seriously...I am not posting 500 pages of stuff just to catch the "common-folk" up.

You have a few snippits from one chapter to insite a discourse that is it, and when someone's discourse is "stupid" I'll call it like it is, that's just my style.

The main point is, Saddam got what he deserved, and its better late than never, and the "ends justify the means". So there is really no justification for NOT appreciating Bush's liberation of Iraq.

Whether or not we should still be there is a question of what is best for Iraqis, if we left now Al Qaeda would take over and establish a "Taliban-like" regime.

The point of this post is to give those who still think Bush is a "Big bad man" for "invading Iraq" something to stare back at them in the face.

Otts, I'm not "silencing" anyone, or preventing freedom of speech. If the "Bush bashers" do not come forth and defend their beliefs, it is because what meager evidence I did provide shut their mouths.

This isn't oppression.

It is taking a flat-earther into orbit and saying, "Tell me the world is flat now BIATCH!"

I not debating this the facts are out there for anyone with a computer


Bush Senior: Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons

Former Reagan official and National Security Council staffer Howard Teicher has described a less than hateful relationship between the Reagan administration and Saddam Hussein. In 1995, Teicher offered an affidavit in the Teledyne case, a legal sideshow to a larger scandal known as "Iraqgate." According to Teicher, he and Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Iraq to make sure the Iraqi dictator received what he needed in order to win the Iran-Iraq war -- or if not win at least make sure there was a draw. "CIA Director Casey personally spearheaded the effort to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles," Teicher swore in the affidavit.
.

Teicher claims the United States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing US military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Reagan also sent a secret message to Saddam, which then vice president Bush delivered to Egyptian President Mubarak, and Mubarak passed on to Saddam, "telling him that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing of Iran." Reagan CIA director Casey wanted to give Saddam cluster bombs, which "were a perfect 'force multiplier' that would allow the Iraqis to defend against the 'human waves' of Iranian attackers," explained the former NSC staffer. He recorded Casey's comments in meeting minutes, which are now in the Ronald Reagan presidential archives in Simi Valley, California.
In 1982, Reagan "legalized" direct military assistance to Iraq. This resulted in more than a billion dollars in military related exports. According to Kenneth R. Timmerman (author of The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq) the US government under Reagan and Bush sold Iraq 60 Hughes MD 500 "Defender" helicopters, eight Bell Textron AB 212 military helicopters equipped for anti-submarine warfare, 48 Bell Textron 214 ST utility helicopters (sold for "recreational" purposes), and US military infra-red sensors and thermal imaging scanners (sold illegally to Iraq through a Dutch company). After the Gulf War, the International Atomic Energy Agency found the following US equipment in Iraq: spectrometers, oscilloscopes, neutron initiators, high-speed switches for nuclear detonation, and other tools used to develop and manufacture nuclear weapons.
"One entire facility, a tungsten-carbide manufacturing plant that was part of the Al Atheer complex," Timmerman told the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, "was blown up by the IAEA in April 1992 because it lay at the heart of the Iraqi clandestine nuclear weapons program, PC-3. Equipment for this plant appears to have been supplied by the Latrobe, Pennsylvania manufacturer, Kennametal, and by a large number of other American companies, with financing provided by the Atlanta branch of the BNL bank."
BNL -- or Banca Nazionale del Lavoro -- provided more than $5 billion in unauthorized loans to Iraq, including $900 million guaranteed by the US government. "About half of the money allegedly went to finance the purchase of US farm products, including $900 million guaranteed by the Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corp., but investigators said much of the rest had helped fuel Iraq's military buildup," wrote George Lardner in the Washington Post on 22 March 1992. Lardner and others were learning about covert and illegal arms sales to Iraq through Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, chairman of the House Banking Committee. Gonzalez was conducting "special orders" -- uninterrupted speeches on the House floor -- detailing the criminal behavior of Reagan and Bush. Hardly anybody paid attention, least of all Bush, who was running for a second term.
While Bush Junior declares he "will not allow... a nation such as Iraq to threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction," the administration of his father and Reagan, as the Gonzalez revelations demonstrate, apparently didn't have the future of America in mind when they allowed biological and chemical weapons -- as well as massive amounts of conventional military hardware -- to be exported to Iraq. They were only interested in making sure Saddam gassed as many Iranians as possible -- and thus pay back the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for evicting the despised Shah Reza Pahlavi and initiating an anti-western revolution in Iran. No doubt it irks Bush, Cheney, neocons in general, and a few mulitnaitonal oil corporations that Iran is calling the shots on its oil resources.
to read the rest of this peice www.alternet.org...

[edit on 26-6-2004 by Sauron]

Oh and in case you're wondering, that 500 pages is from several books, written by a Liberal (not politically liberal, different concept altogether) a book written by a Realist, and a book written by some muddled economists probably Constructivists who were more concerned with how our "modern world" came to be than with what led to the actual causes of wars.

Along with just basic facts of Saddam's take-over of the Ba'athist party and of Iraq. And how he maintained power.

I only posted from one book, I can post from others.

Sauron, your entire post is full of "Teicher claims". That's not facts, that is Teicher claiming.

And it is easy for Teicher to make claims like "the administration wanted to ensure Iraq-Iran war would at least end in a draw." Because Teicher is claiming this "after the fact".

Where is the "proof" the doccuments, the speeches, the memorandums??? The evidence?

One man making claims is hardly a fact.

The current "facts" are that the US did protect its interests during the Iraq-Iran war, it did send its fleet to the Persian Gulf to prevent Iran from interrupting oil traffic and prevent the eventual collapse of Iraq because if Iran dominated everything then their religious regime would attempt to conquer smaller neighbors. Kuwait was very affraid of this.

This does not mean that we went so far as to actively aid Iraq, which "Teicher claims".

I love Sauron, how you get your facts from "alternet". I think you need Otts' advice more than I do.

They were only interested in making sure Saddam gassed as many Iranians as possible -- and thus pay back the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for evicting the despised Shah Reza Pahlavi and initiating an anti-western revolution in Iran.

Oh yes, that's it, all the aid to Iraq was "pay back."

Will someone please explain to me then why the United States was helping Iran before it was helping Iraq?

It was not some stupid reason like "pay back", it was "balance of power". The US did not want to see the region fall to one power because then it may side with the Soviet Union, and the the Soviet Union did not want to see the region fall to one power because it might side with the United States.

And all along, neither side gave a crap about the US or Soviet Union, Saddam and Khomeini were fighting a religious war, both declared a Jihad on the other and said the other was an "Enemy of God".

Seems to me it's a draw. Since I've started posting on this forum (with a bottle of Aspirin never too far) I've seen quotes of sources claiming to prove Iraq had WMDs, others claiming to prove it hadn't, sources allegedly proving that the U.S. supported Iraq during the 80's and others claiming to prove that the U.S. supported Iran.

The thing is... it can go either way, the U.S. having supported either Iraq or Iran. Just the fact that the American hostages in Iran were freed on January 20, 1981, at noon ET, right after Ronald Reagan had been sworn in (even though Jimmy Carter had spent months negociating for their release) hints at some double-dealing. If there was some with Iran... why not with Iraq?

The fact is, this is why historians often disregard books written two to twenty years after an event - witnesses often still have something to protect or advocate, and objectivity is not guaranteed.

Likewise, history will not make a judgement on Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq for a good number of years. Even I - as one who opposes that decision - recognize that. What I have great difficulty with the manner in which it was carried out, and how dissenting countries were treated by American public opinion.

Otts, I disbelieve that history is or should be studied "objectively".

Humans are not automatons, their emotions drive them to do the things we record into history, thus to understand history we shouldn't observe objectively, but try to observe the correct "subjective" views of those who were involved in that bit of history.

In fact this is what a World Political Scientist does all the time when analyzing an event at the individual level. WWI is often blamed on the assassination of the Arch-Duke Ferdinand, but in reality it was caused by the psychology of the autocratic rulers. None of them wanted war, but all of them felt insecure and that the others were more powerful and out to get them. I mean hell WWI might have just been between Germany and Russia, if General Moltke wasn't such a whimp.

Moltke never liked to contradict his orders, so when he set an order, he never wanted to change it, so when Kaiser Wilhelm got the French to agree to stay out of Germany and Russia's conflict if the Germans did not attack France (and the French showed their commitment to this by moving their forces 10 miles back from their defences of their border), he ordered Moltke to turn the trains around to the east and ignore the Schlieffen plan.

Of course Moltke begged him that he could do no such thing, that if they did so the result would not be an army but a muddled mob with no logistics.

Moltke delayed long enough that by the time he could even give the order, Germans had already invaded luxemburg.

That is the main reason for this post.

It shows psychological characteristics of Saddam, and some of his attrocities that merrited his removal from power. Sure we're 20 years late, but as I said, better late than never.

Americans are not used to doing anything that's not in America's interests, just like any nation actually.

And so when Iraq kills 300,000 of its own people, it's really not our problem or anyone's problem but Iraqis.

But we should see that by dealing with Saddam we have done good, and our motives may not have been any but for ourselves, but this world is not "idealistic" ... people are not valiant heros who save the innocent from the wicked.

That's just the reality of our world.

After all, people are trying to destroy Bush's career because of 800 casualties...by that reaction, Bush should have just not liberated Iraq and saved his career.

Instead he put his career on the line, whatever motive sold him to do so, and the result was the liberation of 24 million people from an "evil man".

U.S. Companies Behind Iraq Weapons Program
Seven years ago I contacted Congress Rep. D. Riegle of Michigan who had headed an investigation of US corporate sales to Iraq. He sent me a summary of the hearings, in which were listed some of the biological agents shipped by US corporations to Iraq, with George H.W. Bush's approval as head of the CIA and later as Vice President under Ronald Reagan.
These included anthrax, brucellosis, gas gangrene, and toxic varieties of E.Coli and Salmonella bacteria. I do not recall seeing West Nile Virus on that list, although some officials have recently inserted it there.
Now, the White House is using the excuse of the existence of these biological agents, which Bush SOLD TO IRAQ, to bomb the hell out of them, and to inoculate 500,000 US troops with experimental, genetically engineered anthrax and smallpox vaccines.
In addition, uniforms were soaked in Permethrin pesticide, and soldiers (as well as civilians on the ground) were subjected to aerosalized depleted uranium. All contributed to Gulf War Syndrome, which has affected tens of thousands of US veterans. I wrote about this in numerous green and leftist journals, including Synthesis/Regeneration, Fifth Estate, Green Politics, Z magazine, and elsewhere.
Now, Iraq releases its report to the UN, which the US literally stole and distributed heavily censored copies. Over 9,000 of the 12,000 pages in the report were deleted by the United States before distributing to non-Permanent members of the UN.
But did they really think they could keep such a report secret? Certainly, Iraq would have put the report onto computer disks, which could be made available via email DIRECTLY to anyone who wanted it. So why would the US go to such great lengths to censor it? Did they think no one would notice
www.hartford-hwp.com...

Who armed Saddam?
From Lev Lafayette, 26 July 2002
1. The British Foreign Office's Report on Strategic Export Controls (released last night) shows that:
a. Arms sales to Indonesia increased from #2m to #15.5m. Licences include all-wheel vehicles, components for aircraft cannon, combat aircraft and military aero-engines. This to a country that committed state-sponsored terror in East Timor.
b. Arms sales to Pakistan increased from #6m to #14m. This to a military dictatorship that created the Taliban.
2. In light of these figures, and the rhetoric of war against Iraq, some points need to be made. Given that Saddam is often described as a man who is willing to kill his own people by using chemical weapons, it's worth examining who armed him in the first place.
3. In the 1970s, Saddam approached the USSR, until then his conventional weapons supplier, to buy a plant to manufacture chemical weapons, but his request was refused. Saddam then began courting the West, and received a much more favourable response.
4. An American company, Pfaulder Corporation of Rochester, New York, supplied the Iraqis with a blueprint in 1975, enabling them to construct their first chemical warfare plant. The plant was purchased in sections from Italy, West Germany and East Germany and assembled in Iraq. It was located at Akhashat in north-western Iraq, and the cost was around $50 million for the plant and $30 million for the safety equipment.
5. British, French and German multinationals turned the request down on moral grounds or because the Iraqi delivery schedule couldn't be met�not because their governments objected.
6. The United States took other steps to ensure that Saddam's rule was strengthened. Mobile phone systems were mainly in the military domain at the time, but the United States government approved the 1975 sale by the Karkar Corporation of San Francisco of a complete mobile telephone system. The system was to be used by the Ba'ath Party loyalists to protect the regime against any attempts to overthrow it.
7. The United States also supplied Saddam with satellite pictures of Iranian positions during the Iran-Iraq war.
8. France provided Saddam with extended-range Super Etendard aircraft capable of hitting Iranian oil facilities in the lower Gulf.
9. While Britain's Margaret Thatcher mouthed platitudes about not supplying either Iran or Iraq with lethal weapons, Britain's Plessey Electronics supplied Saddam with an electronic command center.
10. Iraq was also able to buy French-built Mirage-1 aircraft and Gazelle and Lynx helicopters from the British company Westland.
11. In 1976, while on a visit to France, Saddam concluded the purchase of a uranium reactor. Jacques Chirac, then the Prime Minister and now the President, approved the deal. The supplier was Commissart l'Energie Atomique (CEA) and the plutonium reactor was called Rhapsodie. France also signed a Nuclear Cooperation Treaty with France, providing for the transfer of expertise and personnel.
12. In 1978, the Italian firm Snia Technit, a subsidiary of Fiat, signed an agreement with Iraq to sell nuclear laboratories and equipment.
13. Whenever the declared policies of the Western countries stood in the way of an arms deal, Western governments used two methods to get around their own rules and thereby manage public opinion.
Read more www.hartford-hwp.com...

I could go on all night but I'm in no mood for it like I said its all over the net it's just a matter of looking

Sauron, I just love how you leave so much out.

The CCCP is a great example, who armed Iraq? Well considering that ALL THE EQUIPMENT THEY ARE USING IS SOVIET is a good signature that you are looking at just one-half of the story.

Iraq doesn't use Abrams, they use T-72s.

Iraq doesn't use M-16s, they use AK-47s.

Iraq doesn't use 5.51s, they use 7.62s.

That list can go "on and on and on".

Again look at the difference of maintanance of "balance of power" and who put Saddam in power.

USA certainly did not put Saddam in power.

But the USA was not going to watch the entire Arab world fall to control of Iranians or Iraqis as that presented a more dangerous situation in the still Soviet-USA Cold War era.

FreeMason - I understand what you're saying, and I agree that this world is not idealistic. I also agree that Saddam was a horrible leader who deserves to be hanged by his gonads. I guess what spooks a lot of people was how this was done - a good number fear that if the U.S. intervened militarily this way in a unilateral manner, we have to accept that it'll go after other enemies or intervene the same way where, as you say, its interests are in jeopardy - and we have to trust very, very hard that it's doing it for the right reasons. And I don't know if the world is ready to give your country that kind of terrific power.

Seeing the USA from a Canadian perspective is pretty different... we're like the bug at the foot of the giant, and we have to hope the giant doesn't distractedly move his foot...

HHHmmmmmm I don't see anyone arguing on the grounds that it is simply morally wrong to kill innocent people, including your own, and lots of them,just to get one man.

Where is the morallity argument..oh I just started it.

Started what smudge?

Oh you are saying it is morally wrong to kill some innocents to get rid of a man who is killing far far more?

Why don't you read the part where it says the "Iraqis and Iranians who were carrying their own coffins to the front."

That's how brutal a war it was.

And Saddam wanted it, he loved it, it gave him "power".

Do you even have any idea how many died in that war?

It�s not that I left them I was pointing out the Americans who supplied Iraq an Iran as well i.e. the Iran Contra deals, you are right CCCP before the Americans all the major arms manufactures supply who they can for the almighty dollar, then have these little countries fight there proxy wars for them for what ever reason or goals, be it political
Or for cash.

Well see that's the issue Sauron, you seem to think that USA and CCCP had some cause of the Iran-Iraq war.

But they had no partake in that cause, Saddam caused it all on his own.

Morallity....I don't smack my kids when I want them to stop fighting.
You just don't get it do you... if you state that murder is wrong...how can you then use the same method to make your point...there ....I can't make it any simpler than that for you.

Originally posted by Smudge
I can't make it any simpler than that for you.

Murder and War are related but seperate issues.

War is a justified action that results in loss of life.

Murder is the cold blooded taking of a life illegaly.

Id hazard to guess your a pacifist are you not?