FDR met with Stalin and the USSR helped us defeat Hitler. I guess we are responsible for all of Stalin's murders, then.
No, but we decided the Nazis were the worse threat at that time. And later on we didn't have to invade the Soviet Union. In addition our gamble paid off, and the Soviets captured Berlin and the Nazis were defeated. Did Saddam capture Tehran? Was Iran defeated? Were we able to keep our troops out of Iraq the way we did the Soviet Union? Once policy worked out to some degree, and the other helped create and support a tyrant.
I must have missed the part where we helped get Stalin into power and then sold him the weapons he used to murder millions.
So I guess if you sell your neighbor a shotgun and then 20 years later he uses it to kill your wife, you have no recourse. After all, you sold him the shotgun.
IIRC, the vast majority of Saddam's WMD killings (Kurds, Iran, etc.) were in the early to mid 80s, 0-5 years after we sold him those arms. For crying out loud, Saddam didn't even use WMDs in GWI. I guess if you sell a shotgun to someone and a couple of years later, he shoots your wife, it is OK to wait another 15 years, unilaterally decide to bust into his house, and take the law into your own hands before the court system has a chance to take care of him.
Andy, this isn't the first time you've posted this, and it isn't the first time I've asked you for a little documentation of your claim that "we armed Saddam". According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (sipri.org) the breakdown of arms sales to Iraq from '73-'90 are as follow (% of total dollar value of arms sold): USSR - 57% France - 13% China - 12% Czechs - 7% Poland - 4% Brazil - 2% The USA, along with Libya, Egypt, Denmark and Romania, are attributed with +/- 1% each.
Buck Turgidson....well i do agree they did not arm Iraq....but you can't question that the U.S put Saddam in power....he was the U.S's spoon. Arabs say that he was given the green light from someone in the U.S to attack Kuwait. kinda crazi if that is true. something to think about, the benefit to the U.S was huge.
You are implying with the above quote that the US helped Saddam get into power and then sold him weapons. That is simply not true. What weapons did the US sell to Iraq that helped it "muder millions?" If the US sold so many weapons to Iraq why were all the Tanks Russian? Why were all the planes MIGs (or perhaps Mirages)? Why were all the guns AK-47s? Why were all the missiles SCUDS? Why was the missile that shot the U.S.S. Stark an Exocet (French)? What US weapons did Saddam use? Ever? The truth is that most of Iraq's weapons came from the former Soviet Union with a small percent coming from France and an even smaller percent coming from Brazil (of all places). There is some truth to the fact that Iraq got research-grad Anthrax from an American company (not from the US government) but it was the University of Bagdad that requested the sample and, at the time, it was not un-heard of to sell Anthrax to any research institution that requested it. Also, Saddam came into power in the late '70's which means that if the US had anything to do with his rise it was the Carter administration that was behind it.
Percentages, percentages. Who sold Saddam mustard gas, anthrax, and the other WMDs he used to gas the Kurds and Iranis? The answer (since that was a rhetorical question) is the United States.
Once again, Andy, I'm just asking for a little documentation. Preferably from somewhere reputable. You repeating something over and over...well...is not quite the same thing.
OK.....I will give you the point about the <i>wording</i> issue being cloudy on the timeline of events. That still doesn't address the part about the US installing Saddam to power. You didn't specify <b>to power</b>.......but most readers would get that impression as that what was meant. <i> ....but I knew in the 80's that the US DID install Saddam.</i> US Presidents in the 1970's Nixon Ford Carter The second term Nixon Administration was shortlived and I never thought of the Ford and Carter Administrations as groundbreakers in foreign affairs. Exactly how did the US install Saddam to power?
I'm sure you'll dismiss the source. But this is just one of many. Search engines are great! --------------------- THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. Classified US Defense Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas. The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning. One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986. The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US. The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.' http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.htm
First of all, the "millions" I was referring to were the millions that Stalin killed (in response to the silly analogy posted by imadrummer). The US sold Saddam mustard gas, anthrax, and other chemical and biological agents while Iraq was at war with Iran. Saddam used these weapons in the war with Iran and then gassed the Kurds, again with weapons provided by the United States. All of the conventional weapons were aupplied by other countries, but the chemical and biological agents that Saddam used were provided by the US or companies based in the US. Mustard gas, sarin, etc. Who cares??? I wasn't blaming it on Reagan (I know you like to think I am just anti-GOP, but that opinion is one of the biggest fallacies there is), I was just saying that the US helped get Saddam in power and then provided him with WMDs.
You missed the point. Of course you can find a difference in our alliance with Stalin and our alliance with Saddam. Good job. The point is that we have to make alliances with evil people to defend ourselves against other threats. In the case of Saddam, we were dealing with Iran. Did it work out perfectly? No, I am not arguing that the choice was wise. I am arguing that we have to make these choices for our security.
Here's more from our own National Security Archive Very interesting reading on Reagan's relationship with Saddam. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
mango...i thought you would know better... there are american agencies that are developed to look after national interest(s) however you want to state it... it does not necessarily mean that the president has to know about it..it was the CIA that mostly was accused of being involved.. its funny how everyone thinks Bush is the powerful one...you guys need to look deeper ...he's a pawn to those who hold the real power... he listens. they put him in power by assassinating the former ruler before Kassem Abdul Karim(Ba'ath party) who was General Abdul Karim Kassem...who was a pro communist.... Saddam was trained by the CIA to take over from Kassem. This is all well know in the arab coummunities. so basicaly it started in 1963!!!!!when the general was assassinated..... not the 1980's....that's when the step was taken further.
Happy reading. The actions were admittedly covert, as were most of the weapons sales, but this article details many of the actions. Basically, When Iran overthrew the CIA installed Shah (also detailed in this article), Washington had to do whatever they could to try to offset Iran, now in possession of high tech weaponry (provided by the US to the government of the Shah), and as such helped to get Saddam in power, sold him weapons to help him consolodate his power, and gave him intelligence on Iran to help him in his invasion of Iran. http://clem.mscd.edu/~princer/peace/scoop2.htm
I have read the article you posted several times. Please copy and paste the part that specifies something similar to the <b>US installing Saddam in 1979</b>. The closest I found: <i>.......According to Teicher, the "progenitor" of the notion that the "United States should tilt toward Iraq to counterbalance America's lost influence in Iran" was Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor during the Carter Administration. "As early as 1979, in interagency meetings and private discussions...Brzezinski was discreetly floating the idea that perhaps Washington should reconsider its `nonrelationship' with Iraq." (Twin Pillars, p. 61). Five months prior to Iraq's 1980 invasion of Iran the "tilt" became more public when Brzezinski editorialized in the New York Times: "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq...We feel that American-Iraqi relations need not be frozen in antagonism." (With Friends, p. 34)........</i>. Events after Saddam took power in July 1979 aren't what I am asking about. The Shah left Iran in January 1979 and Saddam took complete control in Iraq roughly 6 months later. <a HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/16/newsid_2530000/2530475.stm"> 1979: Shah of Iran flees into exile</a>
