Quote:
Originally posted by HOZ@Sep 19 2004, 12:05 AM
Well, Saddam was backed and supported by the USA in the war against Iran.
Is that where he got all his T-72 tanks, MIG fighters and AK-47's?  The OTHER super power supported him to a far greater degree. The invasion took everyone by surprise. Hardly a supervised American planned action by any means.
This was also when he gassed the Kurds, no one raised a fuss then about that.
Really? I remember a big fuss was made. But then why does the USA have to make a all the fuss all the time? What about our Euro-friends or our Canuck gov't? Where were they?
At the end of the Gulf War, Iraqi's were encouraged to revolt by the Bush Sr. admin with promised American aid, but when they did they recieved no help from Bush Sr. Saddam moved south, crushed that revolt, then moved North and eliminated the northern one...
You can probably read Swartzkoff's (sp?) somewhewre or Collin Powell's that they felt the biggest mistake the USA made was agreeing to allow the Iraqi's to fly their helicopters in the ceasefire agreement. Had they not the insurection would have likely succeeded in the South and North. No doubt the US left them hanging. But it was Hussein that killed them. Lined them up and shot them in the back of the head 24/7 for months afterwards.
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a) Is this your explanation for this? 'Everyone else did it so it's okay?' More countries than the USA did support Iraq, but that doesn't make it okay in my opinion.
Anyways, Russia did in fact support Iraq. The USA supported Iran at around the same time. But in 82 they removed Iraq from a list of terrorist states and began supporting Saddam and Iraq in it's fight against Iran.
...top officials in the Reagan administration saw Saddam as a useful surrogate. By going to war with Iran, he could bleed the radical mullahs who had seized control of Iran from the pro-American shah. (
http://www.nobloodforoil.us/How%20Saddam%20Happened.htm ).
People act like the Iran-Iraq war was just that, a war between those two countries. But there were alot of other countries involved, including the USA. Even Saddam wanted out a few years after starting the war because the Iranian army (US supplied before the war) was not as depleted as he had suspected. But the war raged on anyways, because of outside factors.
b ) Again, does the fact that no one really made a fuss make it okay? Is your explanation the same as above, that no one else was doing it so it must be okay? And one reason the USA takes a little more flack than others in this matter is that they were big allies with Saddam at the time. This happened near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, when Saddam was their main foothold in the Middle East.
Plus, it would appear as though
"[WMD] transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States supported Iraq in its war against Iran." (
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09...aq-ushelp_x.htm ).
c) Perhaps Schwarzkopf and Powell do indeed regret it. But the descision at the time was based on strategy.
“I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit—we would still be there,” wrote the American commander in Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, in his memoirs. America’s allies in the region, most prominently Saudi Arabia, feared that a post-Saddam Iraq would splinter and destabilize the region. The #####es in the south might bond with their fellow religionists in Iran, strengthening the #####e mullahs, and threatening the Saudi border. In the north, the Kurds were agitating to break off parts of Iraq and Turkey to create a Kurdistan. So Saddam was allowed to keep his tanks and helicopters—which he used to crush both #####e and Kurdish rebellions.
http://www.nobloodforoil.us/How%20Saddam%20Happened.htm
As I have said already, Saddam was an American foothold in Iraq. He kept Iraq stable, and thus, helped to keep the rest of the region stable. Allowing the rebellions to occur and eliminate Saddam might've de-stabalize the region, so giving Saddam the means to remain in power seemed like a strategic thing to do. It's easy to, after the fact, say that it was a mistake to allow Saddam to keep his tanks and aircraft, but I doubt taking them away was ever even considered for the reasons stated above.
Anyways, on a somewhat related note, Bush jr's endevour in Iraq nowadays is proving alot of these notions true: That Iraq would become unstable without Saddam and that America might be there for a very long time...