So we provided Soviet T-55s, T-62s, T-72s, MiGs, AK-47s, and French Mirage aircraft with Exocet missles? And the training to use them?

You do realize Saddam’s Iraq was a Soviet client state, an enemy of our (post ’68) friend Israel, and that he was still receiving Russian (and perhaps French) weapons on the eve or even during the US invasion.

The people with the dirty ties to Saddam are French, Russian, and UN officials.

Ho,

We haven’t done much. The Russian, French, and British influence has been more significant. We were not even a major supporter of Israel until after ’68.

Unverified stories of CIA involvement with Saddam are small potatos even if true. They don’t hate us for what we have done, but for what we are.

All the stuff I can find to back that story leads back to Roger Morris, a State Department foreign service officer who quit when Nixon invaded Cambodia, or anonymous sources. I don’t buy it, in part because Saddam’s Iraq was a Soviet client state.

Back up your claims with sources that don’t lead to Morris.

How typical, anything except accepting responsibility for our actions, or that they might illicit a response.

Nothing but hollow posturing. Boring. Pathetic.

Boo.

Once again your collegiate verbalising demonstrates the academic and logical blinders “you” stumble through life with. ..Oh, and into wars.

“Saddam Hussein is responsible for his own actions, the US is not The Great Satan, and your analysis is shallow indeed.”

Saddam is responsible for his own actions. And who is for ours?

If by Great Satan you mean the country with the biggest, slimiest intelligence agency, the most powerful military with the most bases scattered in every corner of the world, the one meddling the most in other peoples affairs, peddling cash, arms and political influence the most, invading other countries the most, bringing to power and supporting dictatorships the most, and willing to do anything for money the most, if all of this is considered ..then I guess that is “us”, United Satans of America( your choice of words. Mine would be Imperialist Money Bags of America. Closer to reality.

And what about substance? My run down on how Saddam enterred politics (a CIA assassin), bringing his minority party to power (2 times), arming them when we needed them, training his security forces and Army, complicity in his people’s misery for 30 years, then starving 1 million of his people out for having weapons we gave (or sold) him, then invaded killing tens of thoudands more, not to mention destroying their infrastructure and generally blowing the country to bits, or triggering an unstoppable civil war, all this isn’t substantive enough to support my premise: That Arabs have a good reason to fight us. (And that’s just the U.S. working it’s magic on Iraq).

Yet all you have to say is “Saddam is responsible for his own action”, and my views are “shallow indeed”.

Again, in any court of law the U.S. would be found criminally complicent in Saddam’s crimes, and still might, if he’s ever brought to trial that is.

I suppose we could have hired a nice, democratic kind of guy to kill Kassem back in ’57, but you know, in this world that ain’t easy. Nice guys commited to democracy don’t shoot elected presidents in the head.

Hold tight to our flag Michael, you don’t want to lose your baby blanket.

And a gleeful grim it is. Once again your demonstrations – of being able to marshal facticity in the service of your schadenfreude and shallow triumphalism – in turn demonstrate your more anemic and myopic qualities when it comes to substance and a more mature view of the broader realities. No one believes the US performed flawlessly during the Cold War, only that the US and the West in general, given the choices and realities, were on the right side of history and similarly that the Left was consistently on the wrong side of that same history. The US didn’t perform flawlessly or with moral purity during WWII or any of its other conflicts either. Hence it’s a strawman argument and a demonstration of a shallow analysis to suggest otherwise. The simple fact remains, Saddam Hussein is responsible for his own actions, the US is not The Great Satan, and your analysis is shallow indeed.

“The ol’ Lefty reasoning goes: because the US helped, we are responsible for the aftermath”.

Excuse me, but perhaps the support of the most powerful nation on earth might embolden people to attempt things they would normally never do, especially if you’re the tiny minority Baath Party back in ’59.
Without out our weight behind them what would have happened? Yes, remain thugs (Saddam was studying law), but thanks to us they bacme big international thugs, elevating them to a level they could really do some harm.

And in any court of law, if you’re an accomplice you’re guilty, as Saddam’s lawyers are sure to argue.

And I disagree, in this context we’re not “alerting someone to a fire”, we’re giving the arson the gasoline and the match, and for no other reason then it was in our interest at the time.

As for “falling down and breaking a leg”, if you calculate American meddling setting off the chain of events from Mossagdeh’s murder to the Shah, Saddam, and after, we’re talking about a few million dead people. This is no broken leg.

“I am blessed with the ability to ignore it. You da’ man, George Bush, you da’ man!” ..No, you are only blessed with blindness.

If I am correctly informed Saddam was on the CIA payroll in Cairo from 1957, involved in both the botched assassination of Iaqi President Abdul Kassim in 1959, and the successful 1963 killing, which brought the Baath Party to power (in the first place). As the Baath Party’s Interior Minister, Ali Saleh, was later quoted: “We rode the CIA train to power”.

Excuse me, but Saddam was on that train.

The 1963 coup was indeed bloody, involving collecting names of (“communist”) intellectuals, politicians etc., and their families, and liquidating them outright. After Saddam performed further work hunting down and interrogating (torturing) “communists”, again on the CIA payroll, as he rose in the ranks of the Baath Party, first becoming head al-jihaz a-khas, their secret intelligence service. Again benifiting from US expertice.

Overthrown in a military coup themselves, the Baath Party returned to power again in 1968, once more with CIA help. Saddam was made number two in the party. Thanks America.

Nationalising their oil industry in ’72, and a complete U.S. oil embargo after the Arab Israeli War, the U.S. did cut off diplomatic relations. No one else did because they were still getting their oil. Yet business and some military relations continued, as they did when the U.S. cut off relations with South Africa.

Just because offial diplomatic relations are severed doesn’t mean everything comes to a dead halt. This is “drivel” on your part.

As the Shah of Iran was ousted in Iran in 1979, all was forgotten (including our 1952 coup that ousted Iranian President Mossagdeh tha brought the Shah to power in the first place, setting off the whole chain of murderous events we’re talking about). That year Saddam was made number 1 in the Baath Party in Iraq, purging his country of all political opponents. Again, while diplomatic relations with the US were still off, the official thaw was quick. Saddam was our favourite boy again, despite his brutal political purges.

US arms and finaces aided Iraq in the war against Iran, and (not) funny enough, Iran against Iraq too (to weaken both sides, and to finance our bloody adventure in Nicaragua). ..Oh how the Arabs must love us.

We delivered the gas and equiupment for it’s proper use because Iran was gaining the upper hand in the war. It was clear he was going to use the gas, that’s why we gave it to him. According to a US Armed Forces Radio disclosure we trained him how to handle and use them both, the gas and equipment. Other US sources confirm this as well. You’re dreaming if you think we didn’t know.

As for Saddam not being any worse then others in the region, like the Shah, Saudi’s lovely ruling family,
or Turkey’s military government, maybe that’s because we trained them too.

And just to clarify, America doesn’t have to go around the world causing trouble, theirs trouble already there. We do seem to have a remarkable talent though to intervene in foreign internal disputes and try to steer things to our own, very private geo-political advantage, often with disastourous human consequences: Like the Baath party and Saddam Hussein, and all we see in Iraq today.

Saddam, as a 22 year old student, entered the Baath Party on the CIA payroll, riding the CIA train. While relations were once severed, enough money, intelligence, weapons and terror can be traced back to our intervention over the last 37 years
to make any American ashamed.

This is neither cliche or drivel, this is your tax payer money (and your parents) at work.