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Banned
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Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
Yes I can see myself defending this war to my children in 15 years. As myself and other have stated here before, the who/what/why's are someone elses means to an end, not mine. I see Bushs actions, regardless of motives, as correcting one of the worlds greatest injustices through our action in Iraq. We hung those people out to dry after Gulf War I and we put them in a world of hell with the sanctions. Because of Saddam it is not a lie or exaggeration to say that MILLIONS of people are dead because he had no regard for his own people, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people are dead because the guy was a total paranoid nutbar, now he'll never be able to hurt anyone again. I have always been big on the saying that all evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing, well we did nothing and millions upon million needlessly suffered... I see our action in Iraq as finally doing something in a mess we started. What you fail to realize is that words or bureaucracy(sp) (read the UN and it's actions) have no power and no authority, they don't get shit accomplished, all they are is hot air. I would've been fine with going into Iraq without the build up of WMD's, it was our mess to fix.
On top of that, I know the world will be a better place for them as Americans to grow up in because of our actions now. People like you are too shortsighted and blind to the policy behind the actions, that being the bottomline. We will never fully know the effects of our actions, because I'm willing to bet the farm that a great deal of drama and conflict is being averted by American blood in Iraq. As such in the long run America will be a stronger nation for this, as this action in Iraq keeps the world political landscape favorable to us.
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Yeah.....if you give your kids the background info, so they'll know who "get shit accomplished". Don't hold anything back, better that they hear it from you!
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...¬Found=true
U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup
Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 30, 2002; Page A01
High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.
Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions.
The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys."
A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.
Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction...............
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Quote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...elp-list_x.htm
9/30/2002 - Updated 02:31 PM ET
A look at U.S. shipments of pathogens to Iraq
Shipments from the United States to Iraq of the kinds of pathogens later used in Iraq's biological weapons programs, according to records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Senate Banking Committee and U.N. weapons inspectors:
ANTHRAX
Iraq admitted making 2,200 gallons of anthrax spores and putting some of them into weapons. U.N. inspectors said Iraq could have made three times as much anthrax as it acknowledged, and could not verify Iraq's claims to have destroyed all of its weaponized anthrax.
The American Type Culture Collection, a biological samples repository in Manassas, Va., sent two shipments of anthrax to Iraq in the 1980s. Three anthrax strains were in a May 1986 shipment sent to the University of Baghdad, which U.N. inspectors later linked to Iraq's biological weapons program. A 1988 shipment from ATCC to Iraq also included four anthrax strains.
BOTULINUM
Iraq admitted making 5,300 gallons of botulinum toxin, a deadly poison produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria, and putting some of it into weapons. Five warheads filled with botulinum toxin are missing.
ATCC sent six strains of Clostridium botulinum to the University of Baghdad in the May 1986 shipment. The September 1988 ATCC shipment to Iraq also contained one strain of Clostridium botulinum.
In March 1986, the CDC sent samples of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxiod (used to make a vaccine against botulinum poisoning) directly to Iraq's al-Muthanna complex, a center for Iraq's chemical weapons program and the site where Iraq restarted its dormant biological weapons program in 1985.
GAS GANGRENE
U.N. inspectors concluded Iraq could have produced hundreds of gallons of the germs that cause gas gangrene, though Iraq admitted producing just a fraction of that amount. Gas gangrene, caused by the Clostridium perfringens bacteria, causes toxic gases to form inside the body, killing tissues and causing internal bleeding, lung and liver damage.
ATCC sent three strains of Clostridium perfringens to the University of Baghdad in the May 1986 shipment and another three strains in the 1988 shipment.
OTHER
The CDC sent bacteria samples to Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission in 1985, 1987 and 1988. The commission was involved in Saddam's attempts to build a nuclear bomb and other weapons of mass destruction.
The CDC also sent bacteria samples to the Sera and Vaccine Institute in Amiriyah, Iraq in 1988. The institute stored samples and did genetic engineering research for Iraq's biological weapons programs, U.N. inspectors found.
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Quote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...q-ushelp_x.htm
09/30/2002 - Updated 02:33 PM ET
Report: U.S. supplied the kinds of germs Iraq later used for biological weapons
WASHINGTON (AP) — Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, claiming it needed them for legitimate medical research. (Related story: A look at U.S. shipments of pathogens to Iraq)
The CDC and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus.
The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States supported Iraq in its war against Iran. They were detailed in a 1994 Senate Banking Committee report and a 1995 follow-up letter from the CDC to the Senate............
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Byrd asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the germ transfers at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Byrd noted that Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1983, when Rumsfeld was President Reagan's Middle East envoy.
"Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?" Byrd asked Rumsfeld after reading parts of a Newsweek article on the transfers.............
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...¬Found=true
(near the bottom............)
The U.S. policy of cultivating Hussein as a moderate and reasonable Arab leader continued right up until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, documents show. When the then-U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein on July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she assured him that Bush "wanted better and deeper relations," according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. "President Bush is an intelligent man," the ambassador told Hussein, referring to the father of the current president. "He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq."
"Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam," said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. "Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation."
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