CNN: World antiwar rallies delight Iraq

Earth--6+ Billion people. Protestors--10 Million (give or take). 6,000,000,000 to 10,000,000. There seems to be a slight discrepency here. Aren't these numbers just the trumped up odds that Custer faced?

 

Read this as a reply to your thread topic.

 

hahah thats great!

 

And something like two seconds ago, in a thread below, I read you post something about how hurt and affronted you were that someone would accuse you of saying that if you were anti-war, you were pro-Saddam.

Ian, nice to see you're still taking Dante's request not to post pictures seriously.

 

People who protest our government's foreign policy on Iraq desparately need to understand that they give succor and comfort to the man who perpetrated atrocities like this:

http://www.krg.org/reference/halabja/halabja1.asp

(Warning: images are disturbing.)

 

Not as disturbing as the fact that in 1988, that WAS our foreign policy on Iraq.

 

Disturbing image (80's)

 

you might wanna read that again. matt is very anti-saddam and pro-war.

but it's cool. whatever you want to think.

 

Dear Ian,

You call that compliance?

Sincerely,
Saddam Hussein

 

Doublethink - it's not just for breakfast anymore.

 

Me being anti Saddam still doesn't make anti war people pro saddam. nice attempt to twist words though. thanks for playing.

 

I don't even know where to begin. Do you seriously think that the US wanted Saddam to attack the Kurds? Your partisan hatred has completely clouded your judgement. You are an example of all that is wrong and pathetic about the way politics works in this country. You are as biased as idiots who try to blame Clinton for everything. Clinton supported many a regime that has a history of crimes against humanity. Would you argue that each of these crimes should be considered our foreign policy during his time in office?

 

You seriously think we cared one way or the other?

We sold him the weapons. We knew what he was. How are we NOT partially at fault here?

Yeah, Saddam could have gone in Armenia 1915-style, but we sure made his job a lot easier.

Sorry that hurts your feelings.

 

Golly, why would that have slipped my mind....

Oh, that's right. Because it's not true. Read it and weep, sucker:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...ode=&contentId=A52241-2002Dec29&notFound=true

When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an Iraqi attack across the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf, the United States was a bystander. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either Baghdad or Tehran. U.S. officials had almost as little sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand of Arab nationalism as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries fought their way to a stalemate, nobody in Washington was disposed to intervene.

By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had changed dramatically. After its initial gains, Iraq was on the defensive, and Iranian troops had advanced to within a few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. U.S. intelligence information suggested the Iranians might achieve a breakthrough on the Basra front, destabilizing Kuwait, the Gulf states, and even Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening U.S. oil supplies.

"You have to understand the geostrategic context, which was very different from where we are now," said Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official, who worked on Iraqi policy during the Reagan administration. "Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation from getting worse."

To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran.

The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle, Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory.

Thus, on Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against the Iranians. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president's recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Hope I didn't overload your education limit, there. *snort*

 

Call me a cynic, but I'll bet they weren't really too worried about the "legal" part of that doctrine.

 

NOT AS DISTURBING!!!

That's right...it was ALL out fault, it's ALL OUR problem, everybody should BLAME US, JUST US for genocidal use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein and his henchmen on the citizens of his own country.

Yes, ladies and gentlement, the loathing of the United States by its own citizens has now reached a NEW low.

 

Your excerpt sounds very much like what April Glaspie said to Saddam in 1990 - except there's documentary evidence for that. Well, you have the word of President Bani-Sadr, I didn't realize you were such a big fan of his.

I have no trouble believing that the US didn't care whether Saddam invaded Iran. What you said was that Carter persuaded Saddam to invade him, rather than simply signed off on the idea.

It may be a ticky-tack point, but then, what did you expect? You also got the year wrong. Everest overstates his case, and because you hate Jimmy Carter - and by extension, everything that's good about America - it suits you to follow his rhetorical lead.

EDIT - I re-read this, and remembered that you had blamed Carter for the deaths of millions. If you want to give Carter responsibility for that, then you should explain to me how he could have done about it. Threaten to invade Iraq? Send in UN peacekeepers? Both sides wanted war here, it's just clowning to suggest it was cynically manipulated by the evil machinations of Jimmy Carter.

So, I'm right, and you're wrong, as usual. That's not news, that's weather. Hell - that's climate.

And, since you consider this source so authoritative, you might want to ponder this passage:

The U.S. also directly supplied Iraq with biological weapons. Author William Blum writes that according to a 1994 Senate Committee Report, "From 1985, if not earlier, through 1989, a veritable witch's brew of biological materials were exported to Iraq by private American suppliers pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce." (Counterpunch, 8/20/02)

The deadly mix included anthrax, botulism, and E. coli bacteria. Blum adds that the Senate Report stated, "these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program."

It's one thing to say "Go ahead, kill each other." It's another to say, "Here are the most horrible weapons we have."

So, to answer Karl while I'm here...YES, KARL. IT REALLY IS DISTURBING TO ME THAT WE WERE THE ONES WHO MADE THE MASSACRE OF THE KURDS POSSIBLE. OR AT THE VERY LEAST, MUCH MORE EASY TO CARRY OUT WITH THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF CASUALTIES. WHAT DID WE THINK SADDAM WAS GOING TO DO WITH CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS, ANYWAY? ENTER THE BAGHDAD SCIENCE FAIR?

IF YOU'RE STILL NOT CONVINCED THAT WE HAD DIRTY HANDS, MAYBE YOU'LL TRUST IAN'S LINK.

In 1988, after an Iraqi poison gas attack that killed some 5,000 Kurds at Halabja in northern Iraq, U.S. aid to Iraq actually increased. According to the Los Angeles Times (2/13/91), U.S. intelligence reported that American- supplied helicopters had been used in such chemical attacks on Iraq's Kurds.

BUT AT LEAST WE MADE UP FOR IT BY SUPPORTING THEIR UPRISING AFTER THE GULF WAR. HO HO HO.

BY THE WAY, KARL, I'M SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR CAPS LOCK BREAKING.

EDIT AGAIN: yes, it's weak to edit a post because you thought of a joke. Report me to the UN.

Dear Karl,

I too am appalled at this unprecedented and unhead-of level hatred of the United States by its own citizens. We truly have reached a new low.

Sincerely,
Robert E. Lee

 

Tenuous Hold on Constitutional Reality...

Who cares if Iraq "delights" in anything? The questions are, the questions will ALWAYS be, "Who are we?" and "For what do we eternally stand?" Are we a nation that even THINKS about not expressing our opinion on the commencement of a 39th armed conflict on Earth because...Iraq might try to twist it?

Or are we a nation that backs everyone having the right to free speech on the entire spectrum of topics, frome Judge Mathis and Joe Millionaire to a war that Congress did not declare?

Ian, if you are worried AT ALL about how authentic democracy in practice looks to anyone, you have an even less tenuous hold on what your rights really are, and what they really mean, than I ever thought...

 

Four loyal Americans from Freerepublic.com break the will of 850,000 peacenik protesters with their spirited invective.

 

• At least the libs are consistent:
• I smoke for 30 years knowing its bad for my health? BigTobacco Inc's fault.
  
• I shoot somebody for a pair of shoes? BigBadGunMaker's fault.
  
• My daily diet consists of BigMac's, McRib's, and a side of fries and I have a heart attack. Whose fault could it possibly be but McDonald's?
  
• I screw my life away selling crack, slappin' da hoes, gettin my game, and end up dead on the street? Why who else could it be, but da man himself.
  
• Saddam uses weapons to mercilessly kill his own people? Of course, it has to be the US.

Don't ever ask a lib to define accountability. To actually hold someone accountable for their own actions is nothing short of evil.

Yep, the libs are consistent. Dead wrong on this and many of their "moral" issues. But at least they're consistent.