saddam is the bravest leader of all

[craner]

Reagan in the 80s for supporting Saddam

As an aside, as it gets rather tiring this line:

The US did not "support" Saddam at any time during his total rule years; they, at points during the Iran-Iraq war, tilted towards him. As they did, by the way, Iran, in a more covert but actually effective and material way. None of which I would condone.

But what I am saying is that, if you say "support" in the case of Reagan, or Ford-Kissinger, then compare US policy on Iraq to, say, France.

Who acctively supported and finanaced and armed Saddam's Ba'ath Iraq (to make a distinction) in various ways at various times UNTIL THE VERY END.

Did I mention FRANCE?

Take context, and certain quantitative elements, and suck on it.

 

[Mr. Tea]

From the Wikipedia entry on Saddam:

The Reagan administration gave Saddam roughly $40 billion in aid in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets. Saddam's Iraq became " the third-largest recipient of US assistance"

Sounds like 'support' to me. Is that not the case, then?

Edit: what did I say about France? I don't think there's anything I wouldn't put past those cheese-eating surrender-monkeys...

 

[crackerjack]

From the Wikipedia entry on Saddam:

The Reagan administration gave Saddam roughly $40 billion in aid in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets. Saddam's Iraq became " the third-largest recipient of US assistance"

Sounds like 'support' to me. Is that not the case, then?QUOTE]


There's nothing inherently wrong with the word 'support' here, certainly not in its literal sense. The problem arises when people extrapolate from that to claim that Saddam was Frankenstein's monster. There are those who'll tell you everything he did was at the behest of the CIA, including the invasions of Iran and Kuwait.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Such people would be twats, then. I've certainly never thought any such thing; Saddam was doing a great job of being a terrible cunt all by himself, he was just made a somewhat richer and better-armed terrible cunt by America in the 1980s, is all.

 

[crackerjack]

Such people would be twats, then. I've certainly never thought any such thing;

I wouldn't dream of suggesting you did.

Saddam was doing a great job of being a terrible cunt all by himself, he was just made a somewhat richer and better-armed terrible cunt by America in the 1980s, is all.

Yes, although it should be pointed out that in the scheme of things America's arms contribution formed a pretty insignificant portion of his arsenal.

http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/000578.html

 

[Mr. Tea]

As little as 1%, eh?
I knew the Soviets were busy down there, I remember seeing Saddam's MiGs on telly during Gulf War I.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I wouldn't dream of suggesting you did.

Sure, I didn't mean to imply you had!

 

[benjybars]

Saddam might be popular now ("Saddam: A Tribute" is the title of a recent article in the Guardian, for example) amongst left wingers and the anti-war set

hmm:slanted: i don't know ANY left-wingers or opponents of the war who see saddam as a hero..

 

[crackerjack]

hmm:slanted: i don't know ANY left-wingers or opponents of the war who see saddam as a hero..

'Hero' might be overstating it, but I'm sure you don't need reminding of galloway's paean to Saddam, nor the fact that he describes Tariq Aziz as a friend. There are many, many, many others who've made common cause with the Sunni insurgency, many of whom are disaffected Baathists.

Is it your contention that the likes of Galloway, Tariq Ali, Pilger etc aren't of the left?

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

'Hero' might be overstating it, but I'm sure you don't need reminding of galloway's paean to Saddam, nor the fact that he describes Tariq Aziz as a friend. There are many, many, many others who've made common cause with the Sunni insurgency, many of whom are disaffected Baathists.

Is it your contention that the likes of Galloway, Tariq Ali, Pilger etc aren't of the left?

As opposed to all those neo-cons who made common cause with Hussein while he was up to his eyeballs in US-sanctioned atrocity, just in case our geo-political amnesia is terminal.

 

[Mr. Tea]

OMG Raygun and Saddam used to be buddies I never knew that!!!!11

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

CIA Intervention In Iraq

From the Wikipedia entry on Saddam:

The Reagan administration gave Saddam roughly $40 billion in aid in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets. Saddam's Iraq became " the third-largest recipient of US assistance"

Sounds like 'support' to me. Is that not the case, then?

There's nothing inherently wrong with the word 'support' here, certainly not in its literal sense. The problem arises when people extrapolate from that to claim that Saddam was Frankenstein's monster. There are those who'll tell you everything he did was at the behest of the CIA, including the invasions of Iran and Kuwait.

The problem arises when people reconstruct history in accordance with their unexamined prejudices.

Roger Morris, a former State Department foreign service officer who was on the NSC staff during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, says the CIA had a hand in two coups in Iraq during the darkest days of the Cold War, including a 1968 putsch that set Saddam Hussein firmly on the path to power.

Morris says that in 1963, two years after the ill-fated U.S. attempt at overthrow in Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs, the CIA helped organize a bloody coup in Iraq that deposed the Soviet-leaning government of Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem.

"This takes you down a longer, darker road in terms of American culpability ....

"As in Iran in '53, it was mostly American money and even American involvement on the ground," says Morris, referring to a U.S.-backed coup that brought the return of the shah to neighbouring Iran.

Kassem, who had allowed communists to hold positions of responsibility in his government, was machine-gunned to death. And the country wound up in the hands of the Baath party.

At the time, Morris continues, Saddam was a Baath operative studying law in Cairo, one of the venues the CIA chose to plan the coup.

In fact, he claims the former Iraqi president castigated by President George W. Bush as one of history's most "brutal dictators" was actually on the CIA payroll in those days.

"There's no question," Morris says. "It was there in Cairo that (Saddam) and others were first contacted by the agency."

In 1968, Morris says, the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Baath party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his ambitious protégé in 1979.

"It's a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA's) involvement there was really primary," Morris says.​

The Devil in the Details: The CIA and Saddam Hussein

"The coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power in 1963 was celebrated by the United States.

The CIA had a hand in it. They had funded the Ba'ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a young member - when it was in opposition.

US diplomat James Akins served in the Baghdad Embassy at the time. Mr. Akins said, "I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them".

"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often.

"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".

This happy co-existence lasted right through the 1980s." 1

"One thing is for sure, the US will find it much harder to remove the Ba'ath Party from power in Iraq than they did putting them in power back in 1963. If more people knew about this diabolical history, they just might not be so inclined to trust the US in its current efforts to execute "regime change" in Iraq." 3

Here then are some quotations that I've gathered on this fascinating early history of CIA involvement in the vicious history of "regime change" in Iraq: In early 1963, Saddam had more important things to worry about than his outstanding bill at the Andiana Cafe. On February 8, a military coup in Baghdad, in which the Baath Party played a leading role, overthrew Qassim. Support for the conspirators was limited. In the first hours of fighting, they had only nine tanks under their control. The Baath Party had just 850 active members. But Qassim ignored warnings about the impending coup. What tipped the balance against him was the involvement of the United States. He had taken Iraq out of the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact. In 1961, he threatened to occupy Kuwait and nationalized part of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), the foreign oil consortium that exploited Iraq's oil. In retrospect, it was the ClAs favorite coup. "We really had the ts crossed on what was happening," James Critchfield, then head of the CIA in the Middle East, told us. "We regarded it as a great victory." Iraqi participants later confirmed American involvement. "We came to power on a CIA train," admitted Ali Saleh Sa'adi, the Baath Party secretary general who was about to institute an unprecedented reign of terror. CIA assistance reportedly included coordination of the coup plotters from the agency's station inside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad as well as a clandestine radio station in Kuwait and solicitation of advice from around the Middle East on who on the left should be eliminated once the coup was successful. To the end, Qassim retained his popularity in the streets of Baghdad. After his execution, his sup- porters refused to believe he was dead until the coup leaders showed pictures of his bullet-riddled body on TV and in the newspapers."​

Sources:

1 Saddam's parallel universe

2 Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, excerpt from Out of the Ashes, The
Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, 2000. Cited by Tim Buckley
http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2000/msg01267.html

3 Richard Helms: CIA Assassination, Regime Change, Mass Murder and Saddam
By Richard Sanders, Coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade and editor, of COAT's quarterly magazine "Press for Conversion!"

http://www.ddh.nl/pipermail/wereldcrisis/2002-October/003148.html

http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/features98/saddam.htm

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Reagan in the 80s for supporting Saddam

As an aside, as it gets rather tiring this line:

The US did not "support" Saddam at any time during his total rule years; they, at points during the Iran-Iraq war, tilted towards him. As they did, by the way, Iran, in a more covert but actually effective and material way. None of which I would condone.

What follows is an accurate chronology of United States involvement in the arming of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war 1980-88. It is a powerful indictment of the Bush administration attempt to sell war as a component of its war on terrorism. It reveals US ambitions in Iraq to be just another chapter in the attempt to regain a foothold in the Mideast following the fall of the Shah of Iran.

A crisis always has a history, and the current crisis with Iraq is no exception. Below are some relevant dates.

September, 1980. Iraq invades Iran. The beginning of the Iraq-Iran war. [8]

February, 1982. Despite objections from congress, President Reagan removes Iraq from its list of known terrorist countries. [1]

December, 1982. Hughes Aircraft ships 60 Defender helicopters to Iraq. [9]

1982-1988. Defense Intelligence Agency provides detailed information for Iraq on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb damage assessments. [4]

November, 1983. A National Security Directive states that the U.S would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing its war with Iran. [1] & [15]

November, 1983. Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of Italy and its Branch in Atlanta begin to funnel $5 billion in unreported loans to Iraq. Iraq, with the blessing and official approval of the US government, purchased computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods for Iraq's missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. [14]

October, 1983. The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States weapons, including Howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violated the Arms Export Control Act. [16]

November 1983. George Schultz, the Secretary of State, is given intelligence reports showing that Iraqi troops are daily using chemical weapons against the Iranians. [1]


December 20, 1983. Donald Rumsfeld , then a civilian and later Defense Secretary, meets with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US friendship and materials support. Rumsfeld -Reagan's Envoy- provided Iraq with chemical & biological weapons
[1] & [15]

July, 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. [19]

January 14, 1984. State Department memo acknowledges United States shipment of "dual-use" export hardware and technology. Dual use items are civilian items such as heavy trucks, armored ambulances and communications gear as well as industrial technology that can have a military application. [2]

March, 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the US becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons. [10]

May, 1986. The US Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax. [3]

May, 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq. [7]

March, 1987. President Reagan bows to the findings of the Tower Commission admitting the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. Oliver North uses the profits from the sale to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. [17]

Late 1987. The Iraqi Air Force begins using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq. [1]

February, 1988. Saddam Hussein begins the "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq. The Iraq regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages. [8]

April, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of chemicals used in manufacture of mustard gas. [7]

August, 1988. Four major battles were fought from April to August 1988, in which the Iraqis massively and effectively used chemical weapons to defeat the Iranians. Nerve gas and blister agents such as mustard gas are used. By this time the US Defense Intelligence Agency is heavily involved with Saddam Hussein in battle plan assistance, intelligence gathering and post battle debriefing. In the last major battle with of the war, 65,000 Iranians are killed, many with poison gas. Use of chemical weapons in war is in violation of the Geneva accords of 1925. [6] & [13]

August, 1988. Iraq and Iran declare a cease fire. [8]

August, 1988. Five days after the cease fire Saddam Hussein sends his planes and helicopters to northern Iraq to begin massive chemical attacks against the Kurds. [8]

September, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq. [7]

September, 1988. Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State: "The US-Iraqi relationship is... important to our long-term political and economic objectives." [15]

December, 1988. Dow chemical sells $1.5 million in pesticides to Iraq despite knowledge that these would be used in chemical weapons. [1]

July 25, 1990. US Ambassador to Baghdad meets with Hussein to assure him that President Bush "wanted better and deeper relations". Many believe this visit was a trap set for Hussein. A month later Hussein invaded Kuwait thinking the US would not respond. [12]

Sources:

1. Washingtonpost.com. December 30, 2002
2. Jonathan Broder. Nuclear times, Winter 1990-91
3. Kurt Nimno. AlterNet. September 23, 2002
4. Newyorktimes.com. August 29, 2002
5. ABC Nightline. June9, 1992
6. Counter Punch, October 10, 2002
7. Riegle Report: Dual Use Exports. Senate Committee on Banking. May 25, 1994
8. Timeline: A walk Through Iraq's History. U.S. Department of State
9. Doing Business: The Arming of Iraq. Daniel Robichear
10. Glen Rangwala. Labor Left Briefing, 16 September, 2002
11. Financial Times of London. July 3, 1991
12. Elson E. Boles. Counter Punch. October 10, 2002
13. Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988. Iranchamber.com
14. Columbia Journalism Review. March/April 1993. Iraqgate
15. Times Online. December 31, 2002. How U.S. Helped Iraq Build Deadly Arsenal
16. Bush's Secret Mission. The New Yorker Magazine. November 2, 1992
17. Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia: Iran-Contra Affair
18. Congressional Record. July 27, 1992. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez
19. Bob Woodward. CIA Aiding Iraq in Gulf War. Washington Post. 15 December, 1986
20. Case Study: The Anfal Campaign. www.gendercide.com

[Not that Mr Craner condones this, preferring to simply, breathtakingly deny it instead].

 

[Guybrush]

'Hero' might be overstating it, but I'm sure you don't need reminding of galloway's paean to Saddam, nor the fact that he describes Tariq Aziz as a friend. There are many, many, many others who've made common cause with the Sunni insurgency, many of whom are disaffected Baathists.

Is it your contention that the likes of Galloway, Tariq Ali, Pilger etc aren't of the left?

Aye, and Pat Buchanan and countless other questionable persons are part of ‘the right’. There are nutmegs and basket cases in any political movement. For this reason, all jabber about a supposed wealth of leftist supporters for the Iraq insurgency is extremely disingenuous. Where is the proof people? Most allegations seem but ill-disposed misinterpretations.

 

[crackerjack]

Aye, and Pat Buchanan and countless other questionable persons are part of ‘the right’. There are nutmegs and basket cases in any political movement. For this reason, all jabber about a supposed wealth of leftist supporters for the Iraq insurgency is extremely disingenuous. Where is the proof people? Most allegations seem but ill-disposed misinterpretations.

What's your point here? I'm certainly not out to defend the likes of Pat Buchanan (although I doubt he has cheered on the Iraqi 'resistance') in particular or the right in general, since I'm on the opposite side

But are you seriously suggesting that there aren't many significant figures and movements on the left (Galloway, Tariq Ali, Pilger, Respect, STWC) who support any old bunch of fundamentalist and/or sectarian murderers so long as they make Iraq ungovernable and embarrass the Americans?

 

[bruno]

incidentally, everyone armed iran-iraq, not just the united states.

 

[Mr. Tea]

incidentally, everyone armed iran-iraq, not just the united states.

According to some stats in a link posted up there somewhere, the USSR/Russia was by far Iraq's biggest arms vendor, followed by France with the USA on a measely 1%!

 

[bruno]

i'll catch up on the thread, tea, sorry. yes, i wouldn't be surprised.

another point, and i'm blurry on the subject, is how pro or against does a government have to be for an arms deal to go forward? because i was under the impression that the arms industry fucntioned much like the drug trade in that it's supranational, with oscene amounts of money, and that these deals will happen with or without official consent, or at such a low level as to bypass scrutiny. i wondered how much of this is going with the inevitable (and making a profit) and how much is actual political decision to press with an arms deal.

 

[vimothy]

The problem arises when people reconstruct history in accordance with their unexamined prejudices.

Thought this was worth repeating ...

 

[vimothy]

Aye, and Pat Buchanan and countless other questionable persons are part of ‘the right’. There are nutmegs and basket cases in any political movement. For this reason, all jabber about a supposed wealth of leftist supporters for the Iraq insurgency is extremely disingenuous. Where is the proof people? Most allegations seem but ill-disposed misinterpretations.

I think that Guybrush makes a good point here. I'm not reading a fantastic amount of left-wing blogs (unless you count the Euston Manifesto lot as leftists (I would)), but I have seen stuff in the Guardian, among other places, praising Saddam. Mostly, support for Saddam and the insurgency is something that I've heard uttered by student activists at work. The insurgents are secular leftists, so I've been told. Saddam was too. They're fighting an anti-colonial war against the US imperialist agressor. I don't think there's anything shocking or unexpected in this, given the wide amount of credance that these tropes have.

But I'm interested in finding out how widespread support for the insurgency is among the left.