I'm an American tired of American lies

[Chris 62]

In late 89, the US shipped him a ton of stuff, some for agruculture, as well as nasty stuff like Antrax, he was all set to be our boy, but being an idiot, he attacked Kuwait.

[Roland]

But the US supplied Iraq with intelligence about Iranian movements during the 1st gulf war, did it not ?

About supplies I'm not sure, but I think I can remember food supplies under some US agro "export" program.... no industrial equipment ?

[Chris 62]

The first part is urban myth, the US shared no intelligence, despite the claims of several sources, unless of course, it's "classified" (it's unlikely, considering how poorly Saddam's armed forces fought, they and the Iranians refought WWI with modern armor used as fire support pillboxes, a mistake they would repeat vs the US in the gulf war).

If they were getting detailed intelligence data, their attacks would have won something besides a few yards of dirt.

I don't recall if industrial equipment was part of the deal, it might have been, we usually set clients up very throughly.

[Roland]

"If they were getting detailed intelligence data, their attacks would have won something besides a few yards of dirt."

Only detailed enough to be warned of another wave of suicidal Iranians. The US was mostly interested in a stalemate, so the information would be limited anyway.

[walruskkkch]

Didn't Saddam have that Canadian guy building them a super gun?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
The majority of the blame for this goes to USSR.

The US started sponsonring the uprising six months before the USSR intervened. Furthermore, if the US hadn't continued helping the Mujeheeden, they would have dried up pretty quick. The main issue for the Muj were the laws freeing women from clerico-feudalism.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Chris 62
The first part is urban myth, the US shared no intelligence, despite the claims of several sources, unless of course, it's "classified" (it's unlikely, considering how poorly Saddam's armed forces fought, they and the Iranians refought WWI with modern armor used as fire support pillboxes, a mistake they would repeat vs the US in the gulf war).

If they were getting detailed intelligence data, their attacks would have won something besides a few yards of dirt.

I don't recall if industrial equipment was part of the deal, it might have been, we usually set clients up very throughly.

Perhaps the problem I have with reading your mind is to do with the fact I don't have a microscope at home.

In July 1990, the State Department criticized a Senate vote banning U.S. agricultural loans to Iraq, in response to Iraq's bully-boy tactics against Kuwait. Richard Boucher, deputy spokesman for the State Department stated that Congress's actions:

'would not help us achieve our goals'.

In 1988, afetr the mass murder of Iraqi Kurds in Halabja, a well-supported sanctions bill failed due to ooposition from the White House. The brutal excesses of Saddam's regime had been documented by a Washington based group, Middle East Watch, and yet the Bush administration still chose to look favourably on the tyrant on the Tigris. Despite his having a reputation for murder and repression on a par with Gadaffi and Khomeini.
Saddam's saving grace for the right wing apologists in France, America and Great Britain was that he provided a kind of stability in a state riven by ethnic and religous tensions, bordering on the hard-line Shi'ite state of Iran (which no-one wanted to see exporting Islamic revoultion to the conservative Gulf States) and Iraq also had the largest oil reserves in the world outside of Saudi Arabia.
The change in America's stance towards Iraq was a result of two things- the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The mutual decision to renew formal diplomatic ties between Iraq and America was made in 1980, shortly before the Gulf War began, but was postponed until 1984, in Saddam's words
'to avoid misintrepretation.'
Of course the cack-handed non-diplomacy of Irangate in 1986, arising from a typical attempt to get two slices of the Gulf cake, put a temporary glitch in proceedings, but in 1987, the tankers of Kuwait, who were then Iraq's ally, were put under the protection of the American flag, leading to an increased build up of American military in the Gulf, ultimately leading to the 1988 shooting down of a civilian Iran Air airliner.
Two weeks later, Teheran accepted a ceasefire with Iraq, under UN Security Council resolution 598. Perhaps the White House liked the idea of a return to Palmerstonian 'gunboat' diplomacy.

A bipartisan American delegation visited Saddam on 12 April 1990- to express concern about Iraq's development of 'weapons of mass destruction'. Has a familiar ring, that. Most of the senators were from grain states, and Senator Alan Simpson explained to Saddam:
'Democracy is a difficult thing (so much harder to gas your opponents). I think the troubles you have are with the Western media, not with the American government. The press is full of itself...They take themselves for wise politicians, geniuses. All journalists.'
Bob Dole reassured Saddam after a 'critical' Voice of America broadcast on 15 February 1990 that the criticism
'Doesn't come from President Bush. He told us yesterday he was against all that. [...] A person who was not authorized to speak in the name of the government, a commentator of the Voice of America-which represents the government- has been removed.'

Is this a service which the Americans provide to all dictators, or just a favoured few?

When Saddam invaded Iran, he had at the least, tacit American support, as well as the active support of some of the Shah's American backed former generals.
The former Iranian president, Abolhassan Bani Sadr said after the war that the plan had been discussed with the Americans and had their approval. He said that in the summer of 1980, he received intelligence reports of a meeting in Jordan between Saddam and President Carter's security adviser, Brzezinski, in which the American pledged U.S. backing for an attack on Iran.

Saddam was never a Soviet client- his only allegiance is to himself. A savage oppression of Iraqi Communists presaged Saddam's rise to power and the occasional assassination abroad of leftist opponents punctuated his consolidation of power throughout the seventies. The Soviets were useful to Iraq as a political counterweight to the American backed Shah, and as a source of weapons, intelligence and technology. But then, so was France (who helped Iraq build the Osirak reactor), West Germany, Great Britain and the United States.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave



"axis of evil" what moron invented this term, must be the influence of Hollywood...

For the Record, just the other day us USN Sailor boys at my work had to watch a "Operational Security" Video(Read: Don't let the people know you're listening even though it's been in Time and any damn Tom Clancy book!).
(actually, we can pretty much admit that, Just not the methods. Big Brother is watching...and Lonestar is helping.)


It had then-President Clinton...I'm unsure of where the speach was, but judging from the Cap and Gown I'm guessing at a University Graduation...saying something about "The Forces of Evil."

So, in conclusion....

Blame Clinton!

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Ming
I'm still trying to figure out why anybody would actually care about Woody Harrelson's opinions. He's just an actor...

So was Reagan...

And yet YOU voted for him!

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Sava
Woody's not such a dope after all ...

Chris62, your ignorance and naivety is so thick, I could get stuck in it if I stepped in it.

Who was the Taliban? The Muhajadeen (US sponsored)... Who did the US support in the 1980's when Iran was tops on its sh!t list? Mr Saddam...

You're already stuck in your own. For you to (apparently) state that the Taliban is synonymous with "the" Mujahedin is so completely and fundamentally ignorant it's laughable. It would be one thing to just make such an assertion, but to use it to point out the supposed ignorance of another makes is analogous to someone having their own head so far up their ass that they see through their own eyes again, in a sort of personal mobius strip.

Any resistance fighter was Mujahed - the term derives from local languages variants on Jihad. There were many distinct organizations of Mujahedin, involving all ethnic groups and regions - one of the big reason that the Mujahedin were of very limited effectiveness. (The poor quality of Soviet troops and the abysmal incompetence of the Soviet-lackey government did more for the Mujahedin "victory" than anything else.

The Taleban emerged home-grown from the Pashtun refugee camps and was always a fundamentalist movement intensely distrustful of infidels. To the extent that the Taleban ended up with US "aid" it was due to the Pakistani aftermarket, where a lot of US stingers and captured Soviet weaponry ended up, buyable by anybody. The Taleban were latecomers, and did relatively little fighting against the Soviets. They let their ancestral enemies do that for them.

As for supporting Hussein, the US did it (and so did the entire arab world) after it became clear that the Iranians were going to hand him is ass and win the war Hussein started. The US didn't sponsor the beginning of that war, because just about everyone but Hussein realized that Hussein didn't have a friggin' chance. It was to keep him from being overrun and Iraq annexed to the Islamic Republic of Iran that the US and arab states started propping up Saddam.

[Ned]

I clearly remember Iraq being a Soviet supplied-state if not a client state. Typically, countries that were equipped with Soviet arms had very good relations with the USSR.

When did this relationship with the USSR begin? It seems to fly in the face of what others have said he that Saddam executed communists and leftists off a list supplied by the CIA. I hardly think the US had any real influence on Iraq. After all, for most of the period, the Shah was our boy. And the Shah intimidated Saddam.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


So was Reagan...

And yet YOU voted for him!

Every Politician is an Actor, not every actor is a politician. See the difference?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned
I clearly remember Iraq being a Soviet supplied-state if not a client state. Typically, countries that were equipped with Soviet arms had very good relations with the USSR.

When did this relationship with the USSR begin? It seems to fly in the face of what others have said he that Saddam executed communists and leftists off a list supplied by the CIA. I hardly think the US had any real influence on Iraq. After all, for most of the period, the Shah was our boy. And the Shah intimidated Saddam.

It's more complex than that, Ned. Iraq's main enemy in the Arab world (as opposed to the Muslim world) was Syria- it was the base for exiled Iraqi Ba'ath party members, Communist party members, Daawa, the party of Iraqi Muslim fundamentalists, some of the Kurdish opposition groups- and it was the Soviet client state par excellence. Syria was propped up by the Soviets to the extent that when a triumphant Israeli army was on its way to capturing Damascus, the Americans were warned that this would prompt the deployment of Soviet troops to the Middle East. And nobody wanted that.
Syria does not have the oil assets of Iraq; and it was an exporter of terrorism, and host to Palestinian terror and political organisations. It was also involved in an expensive occupation/war in Lebanon, and funded and channeled funds to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah. This also accounts for the seemingly inexplicable linkage between secular Syria, whose leader, Hafez al Assad, belonged to the Alaouite Muslim minority, and fundamentalist Shi'ite Iran.
There is more than enough circumstantial evidence to show that the Lockerbie jet bombing was payback for the U.S.S. Vincennes shooting down an Iranair airliner, and that tagging Libya as the fall guy was a way of demonstrating to Syria (without offending/involving Russia) what would happen should there be a repeat.
The Shah and Iraq patched up their quarrels over the Shatt al Arab waterway, and the Shah had ceased funding/helping Kurdish guerillas in Iraq.
Saddam's Ba'ath Party is a pan-Arab, nationalist movement, whose founder much admired the beliefs and method of Adolf Hitler- a man who Saddam would like to emulate- he envisages himself as the successor to Nebuchadnezzar and Sargon the Great and has faked a genealogy to show descent from the Prophet's relatives. And yes, the Communists and other leftist groups opposed to the Ba'ath, were executed, purged murdered and exiled, and according to an Iraqi exile I met in Britain it's known to them as the Red Wave, if memory serves me correctly.

[MOBIUS]

I'm an American tired of American lies

Well it seems that the American lies in this particular thread were well and truly exposed!

Thank you Molly Bloom for some thought provoking posts - it seems that no one was able to adequately argue against your points.

Every Politician is an Actor, not every actor is a politician. See the difference?

That there's always work in Hollywood for a washed up politician...