Scott SoCal said:
Rhub was arguing the plight of the Mesopatamians vis-a vis the Bush action and I pointed out their condition before Bush came to town. This was not a basis for invasion and I'm not arguing that.
Let's see, the plight of Iraq pre-Bush. Saddam joins the Ba'th disident political party in the 50's, given the corrupt leadership of King Faysal during the post colonial era who was merely a puppet of the West, assumes power in 1973 with support of the military, and initiates a program of secularization and modernization of Iraq. Saddam was never religious until the end; and thus Iraq was not a fertile ground, unlike Saudi Arabia and Iran, for islamic fundamentalist developments. With the rise of the ayattolah in Iran, who was begotten from the Sha, who was himself begotten by the layman Mousadec's assassination, that was orchestrated by the CIA to secure US oil interests in the region: hostilities between the two Middle East, Persian Gulf powers began to flare up and eventually war broke out in 1980. Donald Rumsfeld met with Hussain in 83, on behalf of Regan and because Khomeyni was the US' arch enemy, to discuss possible US support of Saddam that was in fact given in the form of conventional arms and, certainly at least the means to produce if not the actual systems of deployment, for chemical weapons. Chemical weapons which were then subsequently used by Saddam to murder tens of thousands of Curds. Till 86 Iraq was also given photography from US satelites of the battle scenes, so that while Iraq's army was numerically inferior to Iran's, it had now gotten the upper-hand backed with US technological assistance and weapons. Then,
when it was clear that Saddam would actually take control of the Persian Gulf with US military aid that led to the brutal deaths of thousands of Iranian soldiers and who knows how many Iranian citizens by the partial Iraqi occupation of Iran, the American superpower altered its policy and began giving likewise support for Khomeyni, still its bitter rival. This was known as Iran-contra, something the Regan administration of course lied about before the US Supreme Court grand jury; which should have rather resulted in Regan's impeachment and the imprisonment of a number of high ranking military officials and White House staff members. With US support Iran repelled all Iraqi soldiers by 88. Saddam's ambitions to become master of the Persian Gulf were not made any more tenuous, however, and this led to his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which begot the first Gulf War in which Bush Sr. sent US troops to repell Saddam's army once again. Bush Sr. hadn't, though, as the neocons desired, finished the job with a full invasion and occupation of Iraq on the part of the US military. That would be left up to his son, Bush Jr., who, under the direction of the neocons, orchestrated all that propaganda I mentioned above (at the moment post-9-11 when the neocons knew the Americans were willing to accept anything presented to them, no matter how outlandish, and so cynically exploited their anxiety to manipulate the country) to justify their intentions to bring down Saddam's Ba'th regime and install a puppet government. A government which is only authenticated by being thinly veiled behind the facade of democracy. All of this so Cheney and his boys could better control the oil reserves. One example of the neocons' program of deception to convince America that Saddam was ready to have the bomb, was the completely fabricated document of the Nigerian Embassy Rome that claimed to demonstrate Saddam's purchase of a quantity of uranium called yellow dust through an alluminum aquisition. Nigeriagate, as it came to be called in Rome's
la Reppublica newspaper, was shown to have been a complete debacle by the US secret service agent Valerie Plame. Cheney retaliated by having her identity exposed thus ruining her career, for exposing the myriad false talking points from which the GOP/Bush administration had constructed its popular and political support for the war, which of course had always been a war for oil.
So it seems that Saddam was not merely a self-made man, though had ample US backing which led to the murderous crimes he commited. While his very rise to power was connected to Western mis-management in the region to control the oil reserves, something not unlike the same Western and US
realpolitik which eventully begot another anti-Western and anti-US leader in the region, Khomenyi. And this is why Iran, once the most lay and progressive state in the region under Mousadec, is now under a islamic religious regime that firmly believes it has the right to nuclear technology and hence atomic weapons. While it isn't to be forgotten the military aid Iran was given by the US Regan administration, though the deaths of thousands of Iranians on behalf of Saddam's army doped with US military support, was not cancelled in the regimes memory and has become another reason to see America as the Satanic State.
Of course fundamentalist religious governments are the worst, but if the Middle East has become as radical in this direction as it has of late, then it is also the result of external pressure in the form of cynical Western and US policies there since WWII. And of course, Israel. Israel with its illegal colonies in the cistgordania region, which have been condemed emphatically by the UN, has allowed the arabs and persians only another reason to be at odds with Western and US intentions in the region. Objectively we can say, consequently, that while Saddam was a monster the US for a time fed him before turning against him at a time when he wasn't the real problem. If one were to talk in terms of breading jihadists, then it is Saudi Arabia (officially a US ally in the region!) that one must have dealt with, not Iraq. Whereas if one were to have been thinking about growning destabilization in the region, then it is to Iran that one must have thought about not Iraq. If anything the taking down of Saddam's regime, which has caused the deaths of circa 150,000 iraqi citizens (compair this number with the World Trade Center deathcount, which Iraq under Saddam played no part in) has only created a dramatically enfeabled Iraqi state, that has only surrvived with the US military presence, and, if the US troops leave, certainly Iran has been given the biggest break it could ever have imagined in terms of its hegmonic objectives in the region at large. If the US troops stay, however, Iraq democracy has even less chance of a fruitfull development, as it only exists through a life-support system. Then there is the increased hostility toward the US state on the part of everyday arabs' thoughts, despite what their governments official positions may be, by having a long-term military presence in Mesopotamia; which in the long term can only be negative toward creating a base of US support in the region and lessoning the violence and hostility towards it.
All this because the neocons wanted this invasion and occupation at all costs, and knew they could count on the American people for support. In the end there is little long term benefit for the US with its army presence in Mesopotamia, while the Middle East continues its woes which then is further translated into ongoing hostility in the region and hence an anti-Wester-anti-US stance. So yes I stand by my opinion that Bush Jr. et all are criminals. And your very weak argumant to mitigate such a criminal lable by simply stating the crimes of Saddam, in light of the US aid he recieved and its cynical policies in the region at large, is simply a childish and pathetic and ultimately a completely non-objective reasoning and analysis.
As if the crimes of one are reason to excuse the crimes of another. You seem to not be able see things in light of objectivity, and this will always confuse you, just as you have been confused and not seen things in their proper perspective all of your life.
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