How Quickly We Forget
posted by storiesinamerica @ 7:41 PM
4 comments
Stories in America
I host a daily public affairs radio show in San Francisco called Your Call. It airs from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM. I am also happy to report that I recently got a book deal with PoliPoint Press to write about my road trip through the heartland and the interviews I did with people about why they vote the way they do (or not). It's scheduled to be out in September.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Cost of the War in Iraq
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- Name: storiesinamerica
I'm currently writing a book about my recent six-month road trip to the so-called "red states." I also report for KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco, AlterNet and Bay Area BusinessWoman.
4 Comments:
Rumsfeld’s intent was to use Saddam’s Sunni ties to counter the strength of a Shiite Iran. Today, we have the blessing of retrospect; please explain why the strategy was bad.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index.htm
Saddam's most notorious atrocity was his use of poison gas against Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988, killing at least 5,000. George Bush cited that attack – "gassing his own people" -- as part of his argument for a US war against Iraq. However back in 1988 the US worked to prevent the international community from condemning Iraq's chemical attack against Halabja, instead attempting to place part of the blame on Iran. [See Dilip Hiro, "Iraq and Poison Gas," TheNation.com, Aug. 28, 2002.]
The US had supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, on the grounds that Iran was a greater threat to the US after the rise to power of the Ayatolla Khomeini.
When the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, Saddam's genocide against the Kurds was no secret. The US Senate passed a bill to penalize Baghdad for violating the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons – they did it virtually without opposition, in a single day.
But the Reagan Administration killed the bill. Political scientist Bruce Jentleson of Duke University told the BBC that they did it "for two reasons. One, economic interests. In addition to oil, Iraq at that point had become the second-largest recipient of government agricultural credits to buy American agriculture . . . . And secondly was this continual blinders of the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=152750
They got their wish:
In January of 1998 the neoconservative Washington think tank The Project for the New American Century (which counts among its founding members Dick Cheney) sent a letter to Bill Clinton demanding "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power" with a strong-minded "willingness to undertake military action." Together with Rumsfeld, six of the other seventeen signatories became members of the Bush's first administration--Elliott Abrams (now George W. Bush's deputy national security advisor), Richard Armitage (deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005), John Bolton (now U.S. ambassador to the U.N.), Richard Perle (chairman of the Defense Policy Board from 2001 to 2003), Paul Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense from 2001 to 2005), Robert Zoellick (now deputy secretary of state). President Clinton responded to the request by signing the Iraq Liberation Act, for which Congress appropriated $97 million for various clandestine operations inside the borders of Iraq. Two years later, in September 2000, The Project for the New American Century issued a document noting that the "unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification" for the presence of the substantial American force in the Persian Gulf.
Of course you do realize that this picture was taken at a time when we backed Iraq in its war vs Iran has virtually nothing to do with our current situation...don't you?
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