Re: We can strike Iraq fast - goody goody - a parade
Sarcasm off;
"Just a few days' notice? Haven't we been warning him for ten years? Of course he might have been justified in thinking the last administration was bluffing. But not this one."
NO!
For 10 years US UK & Germany encouraged Saddam to attack Iran after the Iranian revolution. Ignorant people will not know this fact.
Those three countries used him as a proxy and at the time he truly though US was his friend. many millions of Iraqis & Iranians died in the 8 years of war.
US UK & Germany secretly (now out in the open) supplied him with funding (in the guise of agricultural loans) to buy & build weaponry. Saddam amassed the biggest and best equipt land army in the region. The governments of Thatcher & Kohl & Bush told companies to ignore restrictions on shipping weapons raw materials to Iraq (later after the gulf war, the British govt (also after Thatcher) tried prosecuting some companies for illegal shipment of prohibited goods to Iraq - the prosecutions wer withdrawn in great embarassment when several of these companies produced letters from the Thatcher admin asking them to ship the items in British national interests. Saddam used the agricultural loans to produce 'fertilizer' later placed in the nose cones of missiles.
In reality, we in the west became concerned because Saddam was becoming too popular and essentially too powerful. Toward the end of the war Ollie North arranged to supply the Iranians with counter weapons. Saddam was royally pissed off at what many in the region saw as an enormous double cross.
The reason Saddam went into Kuwait is over what the Kuwaitis were doing by way of slant drilling into Iraqi fields. This was happening at a time when Iraq's oil infrastructure was smashed & they had no real income. Kuwait was part of Iraq until hived off by western powers to protect British oil interests. Saddam sought US permission to use force & April Gillespie the US ambasador wrote to him telling him that how Iraq chose to solve the dispute was their business so Saddam went in then just like Norriega was trapped in Panama, Saddam found he had walked into a trap.
The US wanted to use the Kuwait invasion to 'decomission' the many weapons Saddam built or aqquired. Call Saddam what you want but he was actually very innovative and despite our propaganda was very popular not just in Iraq but the Arab world. That is not good for us so we commenced putting him out of business. The act of bastardry by Iraq to set fire to the oil fields was an act of anger at the events and that Kuwait now had impunity to continue to slant drill into Iraqs oil. Just image for one minute what US would do in similar position - but I am sure you don't believe a word I am writing (or care one iota either way).
My point here is to be intelligent about your 'facts' Saddam is our enemy because he was to smart & too popular and had almost built an Arab nuke capability - we in the west don't want that so watch out Saddam. The propaganda crap we level at him is to help disguise our real motives (western supremacy and oil realpolitik).
Doug Marker
