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host · 06-17-2005, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by j8ear

There is no truth about Iraq that you don't see...or can't find, imho.

Here's the truth I find:

1. Brutal dictator overthrown and to be tried for crimes. .............

.......I could care less, personally about some fringe hate monger who does nothing but complain and offers no solutions..................

-bear

edit: word ommision and speeling error

Some more truth, and a proposal for everyone who resorts to posting the last vestige of justification for the unprovoked and "pre-emptive" invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no threat to U.S. national security, and, in it's weakened state, after heavy damage inflicted on it by coalition forces 12 years before, a "no fly zone" enforced for 12 years in the skies over two thirds of Iraq's total land area, and a trade and economic embargo, as well as a secret bombing campaign conducted by U.S. and British air forces for a full year before the invasion......if you stop posting that the justification for the invasion was to "depose a brutal dictator, who gassed his own people", I will stop posting the "gray" that goes hand in hand with your "black or white" justification for this illegal intrusion on Iraq's sovereignty.

Are you aware that the U.S. even sold Saddam the crop dusting helicopters that he used to "gas his own people", and that the Bush '41 admin. continued to maintain full diplomatic relations with the "brutal dictator", as well as military advice and the approval of sales of sensitive and dual use, strategic technology. When the U.S. was selling Saddam the startup materials and providing the tech and military support for the manufacture and deployment of illegal chemical and biological WMD, ole President Reagan was secretly selling Iraq's enemy Iran, thousands of anti-tank missles and other military weapons.

Quote:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...632566,00.html
The Sunday Times - Britain

May 29, 2005

RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war
Michael Smith
THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.

The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make “regime change” in Iraq legal.

Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that “the US had already begun ‘spikes of activity’ to put pressure on the regime”.

The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.

During 2000, RAF aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone over Iraq dropped 20.5 tons of bombs from a total of 155 tons dropped by the coalition, a mere 13%. During 2001 that figure rose slightly to 25 tons out of 107, or 23%. ...........

Quote:

http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...235395,00.html
"We're Taking Him Out"
His war on Iraq may be delayed, but Bush still vows to remove Saddam. Here's a look at White House plans
By DANIEL EISENBERG

Posted Sunday, May. 05, 2002
...........Hawks like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Policy Board chief Richard Perle strongly believe that after years of American sanctions and periodic air assaults, the Iraqi leader is weaker than most people believe. Rumsfeld has been so determined to find a rationale for an attack that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to the terror attacks of Sept. 11. The intelligence agency repeatedly came back empty-handed. The best hope for Iraqi ties to the attack — a report that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech Republic — was discredited last week. ...........

Quote:

Given all the indignant neoconservative
“outrage” over the financial misdeeds arising
from the UN’s socialist oil-for-food program during
the 1990s, when the <a href="http://www.fff.org/whatsnew/2004-02-09.htm" target=new>UN embargo</a> was killing untold numbers
of <a href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0311c.asp" target=new>Iraqi children</a>, one would think that there would be an
equal amount of outrage over a much more disgraceful
scandal — the U.S. delivery of weapons of mass
destruction to Saddam Hussein during the Reagan
administration in the 1980s.



After all, as everyone knows, it was those WMDs that U.S.
officials, from President Bush and Vice-President Cheney
on down, ultimately used to terrify the American people
into supporting the invasion and war of aggression
against Iraq, a war that has killed or maimed thousands
of innocent people — that is, people who had
absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks in New
York and Washington.




In an October 1, 2002, article entitled “<a href="http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/nation/4185241.htm" target=new>Iraq Got
Germs for Weapons Program from U.S. in ’80s</a>,” Associated Press writer Matt Kelly wrote,
<blockquote>

[The] Iraqi bioweapons program that President Bush wants
to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two
decades ago, according to government records that are
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,
saying it needed them for legitimate medical research.

 
 

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 West Nile
virus.
 
 

The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States
backed Iraq in its war against Iran.
</blockquote>

In a December 17, 2002, article entitled “<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,73292,00.html" target=new>Iraq Used
Many Suppliers for Nuke Program</a>,” the Associated
Press stated,
<blockquote>

Dozens of suppliers, most in Europe, the United States
and Japan, provided the components and know-how Saddam
Hussein needed to build an atomic bomb, according to
Iraq’s 1996 accounting of its nuclear program....
 
 

Iraq’s report says the equipment was either sold or
made by more than 30 German companies, 10 American
companies, 11 British companies and a handful of Swiss,
Japanese, Italian, French, Swedish and Brazilian firms.
It says more than 30 countries supplied its nuclear
program.
 
 

It details nuclear efforts from the early 1980s to the
Gulf War and contains diagrams, plans and test results in
uranium enrichment, detonation, implosion testing and
warhead construction....
 
 

Most of the sales were legal and often made with the
knowledge of governments. In 1985–90, the U.S.
Commerce Department, for example, licensed $1.5 billion
in sales to Iraq of American technology with potential
military uses. Iraq was then getting Western support for
its war against Iran, which at the time was regarded as
the main threat to stability in the oil-rich Gulf region.
</blockquote>

In a September 26, 2002, article entitled “<a href="http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorbkgd/following.html" target=new>Following Iraq's Bioweapons Trail</a>,” columnist Robert Novak
wrote,
<blockquote>

An eight-year-old Senate report confirms that
disease-producing and poisonous materials were exported, under
U.S. government license, to Iraq from 1985 to 1988 during
the Iran-Iraq war. Furthermore, the report adds, the
American-exported materials were identical to
microorganisms destroyed by United Nations inspectors
after the Gulf War. The shipments were approved despite
allegations that Saddam used biological weapons against
Kurdish rebels and (according to the current official
U.S. position) initiated war with Iran.
</blockquote>

In a September 18, 2002, ABC article entitled “<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/us_iraq_history_1_020917.html" target=new>A Tortured Relationship</a>,” reporter Chris Bury
wrote,
<blockquote>

Indeed, even as President Bush castigates Saddam’s
regime as “a grave and gathering danger,”
it’s important to remember that the United States
helped arm Iraq with the very weapons that administration
officials are now citing as justification for
Saddam’s forcible removal from power.
</blockquote>

In a March 16, 2003, article entitled “<a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2003/03/16/Perspective/How_Iraq_built_its_we.shtml" target=new>How Iraq Built Its Weapons Program</a>,” in the <Cite>St. Petersburg
Times,</cite> staff writer Tom Drury wrote,

<blockquote>

Yet here we are, on the eve of what could turn into a
$100-billion war to disarm and dismantle the Iraqi
dictatorship. U.N. inspectors are working against the
clock to figure out if Iraq retains chemical and
biological weapons, the systems to deliver them, and the
capacity to manufacture them.
 
 

And here’s the strange part, easily forgotten in the
barrage of recent rhetoric: It was Western governments
and businesses that helped build that capacity in the
first place. From anthrax to high-speed computers to
artillery ammunition cases, the militarily useful
products of a long list of Western democracies flowed
into Iraq in the decade before its 1990 invasion of
Kuwait.
</blockquote>

Unfortunately, the U.S.-WMD connection to Saddam Hussein
involved more than just delivering those WMDs to him. In
an August 18, 2002, <cite>New York Times</cite> article
entitled “<a href="http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/220.html" target=new>Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas</a>,” Patrick E. Tyler wrote,

<blockquote>

A covert American program during the Reagan
administration provided Iraq with critical battle
planning assistance at a time when American intelligence
agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical
weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq
war, according to senior military officers with direct
knowledge of the program.
 
 

Those officers, most of whom agreed to speak on the
condition that they not be identified, spoke in response
to a reporter’s questions about the nature of gas
warfare on both sides of the conflict between Iran and
Iraq from 1981 to 1988. Iraq’s use of gas in that
conflict is repeatedly cited by President Bush and, this
week, by his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice,
as justification for regime change in Iraq.
</blockquote>

As writer Norm Dixon put it in his June 17, 2004, article “<a href="http://counterpunch.org/dixon06172004.html" target=new>How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons</a>,”

<blockquote>

While the August 18 NYT article added new details about the extent of US military collaboration with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, it omitted the most outrageous aspect of the scandal: not only did Ronald Reagan's Washington turn a blind-eye to the Hussein regime's repeated use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and Iraq's Kurdish minority, but the US helped Iraq develop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

</blockquote>

Immediately prior to the US invasion of Iraq, Saddam
Hussein delivered a WMD declarations report to the United
Nations in an attempt to avert a U.S. invasion. Do you
recall that U.S. officials intercepted the report and
removed special sections of it, based on claims of
“national security”? Well, it turned out that
the removed sections involved the delivery of those WMDs
by the United States and other Western countries to
Saddam Hussein, information that obviously caused U.S.
officials a bit of discomfort on the eve of their
invasion.



In a February 3, 2003, <cite>Sunday Morning Herald</cite>
article entitled, “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/02/1044122258580.html?oneclick=true" target=new>Reaping the Grim Harvest We Have
Sown</a>,” writer Anne Summers wrote,

<blockquote>

What is known is that the 10 non-permanent members had to
be content with an edited, scaled-down version. According
to the German news agency DPA, instead of the 12,000
pages, these nations — including Germany, which this
month became president of the Security Council —
were given only 3,000 pages.




So what was missing?



<Cite>The Guardian</cite> reported that the nine-page
table of contents included chapters on

“procurements” in Iraq’s nuclear program
and “relations with companies, representatives and
individuals” for its chemical weapons program. This
information was not included in the edited version.

</blockquote>



In a June 9, 2004, article <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/02/1044122258580.html" target=new>“Reagan Played a Decisive Role in Saddam Hussein’s Survival in Iran-Iraq War</a>,” Agence France Presse points out,

<blockquote>

In February 1982, the State Department dropped Baghdad
from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, clearing
the way for aid and trade.
 
 

A month later, Reagan ordered a review of US policy in
the Middle East which resulted in a marked shift in favor
of Iraq over the next year.
 
 

“Soon thereafter, Washington began passing
high-value military intelligence to Iraq to help it fight the
war, including information from US satellites that helped
fix key flaws in the fortifications protecting al-Basrah
that proved important in Iran’s defeat in the next
month,” wrote Kenneth Pollack in his recently
published book “The Threatening Storm.” ...

 
 

By March 1985, the United States was issuing Baghdad
export permits for high tech equipment crucial for its
weapons of mass destruction programs, according to
Pollack.
</blockquote>

In his June 8, 2004, article “<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/dawoody06082004.html" target=new>Reagan and Saddam: The Unholy Alliance</a>,” Alex Dawoody states,
<blockquote>

By 1982, Iraq was removed from the list of terrorist
sponsoring nations. By 1984, America was actively sharing
military intelligence with Saddam’s army. This aid
included arming Iraq with potent weapons, providing
satellite imagery of Iranian troops deployments and
tactical planning for battles, assisting with air
strikes, and assessing damage after bombing campaigns.
</blockquote>

One of the most fascinating parts of this entire sordid
U.S. foreign-policy episode is that none other than <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm" target=new>Donald Rumsfeld played a key role</a> in it. Yes, the same
Donald Rumsfeld who, as U.S. Secretary of Defense, scared
the American people to death with the thought that Saddam
Hussein was about to employ the WMDs (which the U.S. had delivered to him) against them.





A December 31, 2002, CBS story entitled “<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/31/world/main534798.shtml" target=new>U.S. and Iraq Go Way Back</a>,” put it this way:

<blockquote>

Newly released documents show that U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, played a leading role in building up Iraq's military in the 1980s when Iraq was using chemical weapons, a newspaper reports.



It was Rumsfeld, now defense secretary and then a special presidential envoy, whose December 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein led to the normalization of ties between Washington and Baghdad, according to the Washington Post.

</blockquote>

In an August 18, 2002, MSNBC article entitled
“<a href="http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=228&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported" target=new>Rumsfeld Key Player in Iraq Policy Shift</a>,”
Robert Windrem wrote,
<blockquote>

State Department cables and court records reveal a wealth
of information on how U.S. foreign policy shifted in the
1980s to help Iraq. Virtually all of the information is
in the words of key participants, including Donald
Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense.
 
 

The new information on the policy shift toward Iraq, and
Rumsfeld’s role in it, comes as The New York Times
reported Sunday that the United States gave Iraq vital
battle-planning help during its war with Iran as part of
a secret program under President Reagan — even
though U.S. intelligence agencies knew the Iraqis would
unleash chemical weapons.

</blockquote>

In a February 24, 2003, article entitled “<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/green02242003.html" target=new>Who Armed Saddam?</a>” writer Stephen Green wrote,
<blockquote>

And he’d probably read the front page Washington
Post story (“U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq
Buildup,” 12/30/02) based upon recently declassified
documents, which revealed that it was Rumsfeld himself
who, as President Reagan’s Middle East Envoy, had
traveled to the Region to meet with Saddam Hussein in
December 1983 to normalize, particularly, security
relations.
</blockquote>

In her article “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/02/1044122258580.html?oneclick=true" target=new>Reaping the Grim Harvest We Have
Sown</a>,” Anne Summers reinforced this point:

<blockquote>

In December 1983, Rumsfeld, then a special envoy to the
Middle East appointed by President Reagan, travelled to
Baghdad to inform Saddam Hussein that the United States
was ready to resume full diplomatic relations with Iraq.
A lengthy report in the Washington Post on December 30,
2002 — based on analysing thousands of pages of
declassified government documents and interviews with
former policy-makers — said that “US
intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role
in shoring up Iraqi defences” following
Rumsfeld’s visit.
</blockquote>

So, what is Rumsfeld’s response to all this?
Unfortunately, he suffers a malady that commonly afflicts
Washington officials when a whiff of scandal is in the
air: selective memory lapse. According to Matt
Kelly’s <a href="http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/nation/4185241.htm" target=new>article </a> (cited above),

<blockquote>

The disclosures put the United States in the position of
possibly having provided key ingredients of the weapons
it is considering waging war to destroy, said Sen. Robert
C. Byrd (D., W.Va.), who entered the documents into the
Congressional Record last month.
 
 

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
Hussein in 1983, when Rumsfeld was President Ronald
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.
 
 

“I have never heard anything like what you’ve
read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt
it,” Rumsfeld said. He later said he would ask the
Defense Department and other agencies to search their
records for evidence of the transfers.
</blockquote>

Or as Robert Novak put it in his <a href="http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorbkgd/following.html" target=new>column</a> (cited above),

<blockquote>
Sen. Robert Byrd, a master at hectoring executive branch
witnesses, asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a
provocative question last week: Did the United States
help Saddam Hussein produce weapons of biological
warfare? Rumsfeld brushed off the Senate’s
84-year-old president pro tem like a Pentagon reporter. But a
paper trail indicates Rumsfeld should have answered yes.
</blockquote>

According to the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/02/1044122258580.html?oneclick=true" target=new>article</a> by Anne Summers (cited above),

<blockquote>

These days Rumsfeld likes to downplay or even deny his
role in helping arm Iraq with the makings of weapons of
mass destruction. He has been quoted as saying he had
“nothing to do” with helping Iraq fight Iran in
the ’80s. However, the <cite>Washington Post</cite> says, “The
documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer
US-Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts.”
</blockquote>





Given that the WMDs that were used to justify the
invasion and war against Iraq never materialized, one
would think that the neoconservatives who pushed and
misled America into the war, and those members of
Congress who complacently rubber-stamped the
president’s actions, and those members of the press
who served as the administration’s cheerleaders
would be at least mildly outraged over how Saddam Hussein
acquired his WMDs in the first place — from the
United States and other countries during the Reagan
administration. Unfortunately, the response has been the
standard ho-hum one hears whenever <a href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0303h.asp" target=new>the rot at the center of the empire</a> surfaces: “It was just a policy
mistake; it happened a long time ago; we need to put it
behind us; and it’s now time to move on.”



It is that mindset of denial, however, that is certain to
doom our nation to increasing conflicts, crises, and
turmoil. To restore political, moral, and economic health to our country, it is necessary to excise the cancer associated with the unrestrained — and oftentimes secret — exercise of government power. In order to excise such a cancer, however, it is first necessary to acknowledge and confront its
existence.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The
Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him <a href="mailto:jhornberger@fff.org">email</a>.

even after Rumsfeld's highly publicized Dec., 1983 visit with Saddam, the <h5>relationship and the support</h5>, the U.S. turning a blind on what you and others, today, claim as justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, after all of the initial justifications emphasized over and over by the Bush administration were revealed to be misleading, deceptive, or false,
continued, and went on and on for nearly another seven years......note the U.S. non-reaction to the 1988 reports of the gassing of the Kurds in northern Iraq....business as usual. Your argument today is as empty and hypocritical as any advanced by Bush or Cheney to justify the invasion of Iraq,

Quote:

http://www.ithaca.edu/politics/gagnon/talks/us-iraq.htm
1983:

The State Dept. once again reported that Iraq was continuing to support terrorist groups

- Iraq had also been using chemical weapons against Iranian troops since 1982; this use of chemical weapons increased in 1983. The State Dept. and the National Security Council were well aware of this.

- Overriding NSC concerns, the Secretaries of Commerce and State pressured the NSC to approve the sale to Iraq of Bell helicopters "for crop dusting" (these same helicopters were used to gas Iraqi Kurds in 1988).

In late 1983, Reagan secretly allowed Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, to transfer US weapons to Iraq; Reagan also asked the Italian prime minister to channel arms to Iraq

December 1983 was a particularly interesting month; it was the month that Donald Rumsfeld -- currently US Secretary of Defense and one of the most vocal proponents of attacking Iraq -- paid a visit to Saddam Hussein in Baghdad as Reagan's envoy.

Rumsfeld claims now that the meeting was about terrorism in Lebanon.

But State Dept. documents show that in fact, Rumsfeld was carrying a message from Reagan expressing his desire to have a closer and better relationship with Saddam Hussein.

Just a few months before Rumsfeld's visit, Iraq had used poison gas against Iranian troops. This fact was known to the US. Also known was that Iraq was building a chemical weapons infrastructure.

NBC and The New York Times have recently reported that Rumsfeld was a key player in the Reagan administration's strong support for Iraq, despite knowing of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. This relationship became so close that both Reagan and VP Bush personally delivered military advice to Saddam Hussein. [1]

1984

In March, the State Dept. reported that Iraq was using chemical weapons and nerve gas in the war against Iran; these facts were confirmed by European doctors who examined Iranian soldiers

The Washington Post (in an article in Dec.1986 by Bob Woodward) reported that in 1984 the CIA began secretly giving information to Iraqi intelligence to help them "calibrate" poison gas attacks against Iranian troops.

1985

The CIA established direct intelligence links with Baghdad, and began giving Iraq "data from sensitive US satellite reconnaissance photography" to help in the war.

This same year, the US House of Representatives passed a bill to put Iraq back on State Dept. supporters of terrorism list.

The Reagan administration -- in the person of Secretary of State George Schultz -- pressured the bill's sponsor to drop it the bill. The bill is dropped, and Iraq remains off the terrorist list.

Iraq labs send a letter to the Commerce Dept with details showing that Iraq was developing ballistic missiles.

Between 1985-1990 the Commerce Dept. approved the sale of many computers to Iraq's weapons lab. (The UN inspectors in 1991 found that: 40% of the equipment in Iraq's weapons lab were of US origin)

1985 is also a key year because the Reagan administration approved the export to Iraq of biological cultures that are precursors to bioweapons: anthrax, botulism, etc.; these cultures were "not attenuated or weakened, and were capable of reproduction."

There were over 70 shipments of such cultures between 1985-1988.

The Bush administration also authorized an additional 8 shipments of biological cultures that the Center for Disease Control classified as "having biological warfare significance."

This information comes from the Senate Banking Committee's report from 1994. The report stated that "these microorganisms exported by the US were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program."

Senator Riegle, who headed the committee, noted that: "They seemed to give him anything he wanted. It's right out of a science fiction movie as to why we would send this kind of stuff to anybody." [2]

1988

The Reagan administration's Commerce Dept. approved exports to Iraq's SCUD missile program; it was these exports that allowed the extension of the SCUDs' range so that in 1991 they were able to reach Israel and US bases in Saudi Arabia.

In March, the Financial Times of London reported that Saddam had recently used chemical weapons against Kurds in Halabja, using US helicopters bought in 1983.

Two months later, an Asst. Secretary of State pushed for more US-Iraq economic cooperation.

In September of that year, Reagan prevented the Senate from putting sanctions on Iraq for its violation of the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons.

The US also voted against a UN Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons. [3]

1989

In March, the CIA director reported to Congress that Iraq was the largest chemical weapons producer in the world.

The State Dept reported that Iraq continued to develop chemical and biological weapons, as well as new missiles

The Bush administration that year approved dozens of export licenses for sophisticated dual-use equipment to Iraq's weapons ministry.

In October, international banks cut off all loans to Iraq. The Bush administration responded by issuing National Security Directive 26, which mandated closer links with Iraq, and included a $1 billion loan guarantee.

This loan guarantee freed up cash for Iraq to buy and develop WMDs.

This directive was suspended only on August 2, 1990, the day Iraq invaded Kuwait.

One US firm reportedly contacted the Commerce Dept. two times, concerned that its product could be used for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Bush's Commerce Dept requested and received written guarantees from Iraq that the equipment was only for civilian use.

1990

Between July 18 and August 1 (the day before the invasion), the Bush Administration approved $4.8 million in advanced technology sales to Iraq's weapons ministry and to weapons labs that were known to have worked on biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

So when US ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam the US did not have an official position on disputes between Arab countries, is it any wonder that he thought the US would look the other way when he invaded Kuwait? After this close and very supportive relationship with the Republican administrations throughout the 1980s?

We all know about the Gulf War. But I want to bring in one more piece of history here, from after the Gulf War.

Dick Cheney, before becoming Vice President, was CEO of Halliburton Corp. from 1995 until August 2000, when he retired with a $34 million retirement package.

According to the Financial Times of London, Halliburton in that time period sold $23.8 million of oil industry equipment and services to Iraq, to help rebuild its war-damaged oil production infrastructure. For political reasons, Halliburton used subsidiaries to hide this. [4]

More recently, the Washington Post on June 23, 2001, reported that figure was actually $73 million.

The head of the subsidiary said he is certain Cheney knew about these sales.

Halliburton did more business with Saddam Hussein than any other US company.

Asked about this by journalists by ABC News in August 2000, Cheney lied and said "I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal." [5]

The US media never followed up on this.

Quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...4314%2C00.html
When US turned a blind eye to poison gas

America knew Baghdad was using chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988. So why, asks Dilip Hiro , has it taken 14 years to muster its outrage?

Sunday September 1, 2002
The Observer

When it comes to demonising Saddam Hussein, nothing captures the popular imagination in America better than the statement that 'he gassed his own people'. This is an allusion to the deployment of chemical weapons by Iraq's military in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Halabja in March 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war, and then in the territory administered by the Tehran-backed Kurdish rebels after the ceasefire five months later.

As Iraq's use of poison gases in war and in peace was public knowledge, the question arises: what did the United States administration do about it then? Absolutely nothing. Indeed, so powerful was the grip of the pro-Baghdad lobby on the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan that it got the White House to foil the Senate's attempt to penalise Iraq for its violation of the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons to which it was a signatory.....

This seems like "tough love", illegal use of napalm type bombs that have killed civilians, aggravated by "bombs lack stabilising fins, making them far from precise."

Quote:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/pol...p?story=647397
US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor

17 June 2005

American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.

..............Mike Lewis, a spokesman for the group, said: "The US has used internationally reviled weapons that the UK refuses to use, and has then apparently lied to UK officials, showing how little weight the UK carries in influencing American policy."...............