Quote:
Originally Posted by mac_82
(Iran). But does it matter? The US gave Saddam the WMDs.
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Sure it matters. The American's knew that Saddam was going to be a large part of the strategy to contain Iran. They also knew that Iran also had a massive stock of chemical weapons and biological weapons.
I'm pretty sure that the American's going back to the 70's didn't encouraged Saddam to gas the Kurds. What the American's should have done is different and up for debate.
But to me its equivalent to giving a cop a gun, you issue it for him to use in his everyday work. You don't calculate that he's going to gun down 50 innocent people at McDonalds with it.
At the point in time that Saddam first took power, outside of Israel, Iraq was really the only somewhat friendly regime in that region, and the only somewhat friendly regime with a military that could tie up and bleed Iran.
I think we're also forgetting that the Chinese and to an extent other eastern nations provided Saddam with WMD's or the technology to create WMD's.