Jack Stone wrote:Well, one newspaper article does not make it true, but this has nothing to do with the USA. Note how the article says "BEHIND THE BACK OF THE USA" -- the USA knew nothing about it.
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Dear Mr Jack,
Would you like to throw some light on this 'UNAWARENESS' of the USA?
"QUOTE"
Never mind that forty years ago, the CIA, under President John F. Kennedy, orchestrated a regime change in Baghdad. In 1963, after a successful coup, the Ba'ath party came to power in Iraq. Using lists provided by the CIA, the new Ba'ath regime systematically eliminated hundreds of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and political figures known to be leftists. An entire intellectual community was slaughtered. (The same technique was used to massacre hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia and East Timor.) The young Saddam Hussein was said to have had a hand in supervising the bloodbath. In 1979, after factional infighting within the Ba'ath Party, Saddam Hussein became the President of Iraq. In April 1980, while he was massacring Shias, the U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi declared, "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq." Washington and London overtly and covertly supported Saddam Hussein.
They financed him, equipped him, armed him, and provided him with dual-use materials to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. They supported his worst excesses financially, materially, and morally. They supported the eight-year war against Iran and the 1988 gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja, crimes which 14 years later were re-heated and served up as reasons to justify invading Iraq. After the first Gulf War, the "Allies" fomented an uprising of Shias in Basra and then looked away while Saddam Hussein crushed the revolt and slaughtered thousands in an act of vengeful reprisal. It was Herman Goering, that old Nazi, who said, "People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.… All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." He's right. It's dead easy. That's what the Bush regime banks on. The distinction between election campaigns and war, between democracy and oligarchy, seems to be closing fast. [1]
"QUOTE"
As a most influential associate of Hasan al-Bakr, Iraq's former president (1968-79), Saddam cleverly installed his men in sensitive positions who later helped him in taking over the reins of government in 1979. Soon, he swiftly and ruthlessly eliminated the elements that were not expected to give unquestionable allegiance to him. A state that was dynastic and patriarchal in character further became an exclusive domain of small circle of intimates, linked by networks of tribal alliance and advantage, difficult for anyone to penetrate. Kurds comprising 19 per cent and Shiites 60 per cent of the populace became outcasts. A personality cult was created portraying him as a father of the nation, besides introducing various national institutions to sustain national myths. Iraq's attack on Iran in 1980 was used to divert people's attention from these internal developments. Though the war had a huge economic impact, Saddam became Arab regimes' darling for fighting a "radical" Shiite state.
As a reward, he received a $40 billion loan from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Profiting from the on-going US-Iran confrontation, he also received modern weaponry from US. These contributing factors raised Saddam's stature not only in Iraq but also in other Arab states. Our own General Mirza Aslam Beg was also a "victim" of this charisma. This is also precisely the reason why he sustained politically despite a comprehensive defeat in the 1991 Gulf war.
In the aftermath of the war, Kurds and Shiites threatening his power base were brutally crushed through the use of chemical weapons. This indirectly further strengthened the powerful elite comprising Saddam's own tribe, military hierarchy and Republican Guards as the "outcasts" now became the enemies of State. He also artfully convinced Iraqi public that the economic hardships due to UN sanctions are a result of Iraq's defiance to US imperialism, improving his leadership credentials. In this perspective, it is difficult to understand how come Saddam's military and Republican Guards are ready to rise up against him, being the major beneficiaries of the system. So long as Saddam is alive, they will never ditch him. They know fairly well that the post-Saddam Iraq will be a very difficult place for them.A better way of framing the issue is to focus on Saddam's track record of crimes against humanity and use of chemical and biological weapons against Kurds and Iranians.
SADDAM HUSSEIN AND IRAQ:
"During 1990 when London Observer featured a special investigative report suggesting that Bush Senior had encouraged Iraqi Dictator to attack Kuwait. According to the Observer, Bush sent a secret envoy to meet with one of Saddam's top officials. The envoy told the Dictator's Confidant "that Iraq should engineer higher oil prices to get it out of its dire economic fix ,". The story appeared nowhere that one ever saw in American Media". Saddam took the envoy's advice, moving his troops to the border of Kuwait. U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad April Glaspie told Saddam,"We dont have an opinion on inter-Arab border disputes such as your border dispute with Kuwait". The evidence suggests that US complicity with Saddam went far beyond miscalculation of the Iraqi leader's intentions," wrote Observer reporter Helga Graham. The leaked documents on which she based her piece "have built up a picture of active support for the US President." The story after year a half later appeared in alternative media outlets like The Village Voice, finally penetrated the big-time dailies with a Los Angeles Times report on the Bush/Saddam lovefest.
"In the fall of 1989, at a time when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was only nine months away and Saddam Hussein was desperate for money to buy arms," journalists like Murray Waas and Douglas Frantz wrote, "President Bush signed a Top-Secret National Security Decision Directive ordering closer ties with Baghdad and opening the way for $ 1 Billion in new aid". The Waas-Frantz exclusive revealed a pattern of Bush's support for Saddam dating back to Bush's vice presidential days and running practically until the moment of Iraq's invasion. "As late as July 1990, one month before Iraqi troops stormed into Kuwait city, officials at the National Security Council and the State Department were pushing to deliver the second installment of the $ 1 Billion in loan guarantee," the article said. Two years before the invasion, at a time when (according to Waas's reporting) Bush would have been meeting with Iraqi Ofiicals and pressuring American Banks to fork over money for Saddam, Peter Dale Scott wrote an article for Pacific News Service detailing Bush's role in an International Oil-Price rigging scheme.
The story was named one of the year's ten best "Censored" stories by "Project Censored," an annual competition to recognize important stories that the big media skip, spike, or suppress. On the sands of Saudi Arabia, the petroleum president was at work once more. After the conflict began in earnest in January 1991- more a one-sided assault than a "war," really-more information started to seep out. The silence of the American Media with regard to anything but "stories" and "smart bombs" was stupefying. But had they paid attention they could have picked up on the type of information contained in Secret Dossier, a book by highly respected foreign correspondents Pierre Salinger and French journalist Eric Laurent. Salinger and Laurent took a matter of fact tone and were clearly reliant on Jordan's King Hussein as a source (the often startling allegations in the book also beg the question of why Salinger, one of ABC's top overseas reporters, didnt report the stuff on his network). Nonetheless a little reading between the lines illuminated "The Hidden Agenda Behind the Gulf War" (the book's subtitle).
Salinger and Laurent's infromation, though it hardly proves that the Kuwaitis prodded Into attacking at the behest of their American protectors, does seem to support the hypothesis.The invasion of Kuwait could have been averted at a peace conference in late July 1990, Secret Dossier reports. Iraq would have been mollified if Kuwait met it requests for a $ 10 Billion loan to cover expenses in the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam felt he owed something for staving off the spread of Iranian-style Islamic Fundamentalism.
Kuwaiti's answer was more like taunt than a refusal. "After much discussion the [Kuwaiti] Crown Prince agreed, in principle, to a loan of $ 9 Billion," Salinger and Laurent report. "His refusal to grant the extra $ 1 Billion struck the Iraqis as a deliberate attempt to humiliate them." No problem, said the oil-bloated Saudis, who were more than mildly interested in assuaging the livid Saddam and preventing an invasion. We'll kick in the extra billion. But just when the difficulty appeared resolved, the Kuwaitis pulled another fast one. "We must decide on the exact demarcation of our borders," the Crown Prince told the Iraqis. Without warning, he'd raised the sorest issue between the two nations. A piece of paper dated November 22, 1989, seized from the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry by pillaging Iraqis, seemed to indicate a complicated situation. The internal Kuwaiti Memo reported a meeting between a high Kuwaiti official and the CIA-which was confirmed by the CIA though it scoffed at the document as a phony.
At that meeting, the memo said, the CIA urged Kuwait to "pressure" Iraq into settling the border dispute. George Bush's administration and military were ready for action when Iraq rolled into Kuwait. Too ready, perhaps? Just a week before the invasion the army ran through a stimulated Middle East Operation called "War Flag'90". In the War Game, despite that real war seemed imminent in that region , Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell omitted names of the various Gulf States from the game map and redrew borders to disguise the nations involved. "Exceptional tact," declares Salinger, with a possible touch of sarcasm. Bush was his manipulative self in the early days of the crisis, playing Arab nations against each other. He told Jordan that the United States would do nothing for forty eight hours, then turned around and, through the State Department, sent a threatening message to Egypt.
Take a "firm stand" against the invasion or Egypt will "no longer be able to count on America." At the United Nations, Bush threw money at some and bullied others to build his "coalition, " legitimizing what might otherwise appear to be another episode of American swashbuckling. "Yemen's ambassador was informed that his would be "the most expensive no vote you ever cast, " if that country balked at the US backed "use of force" resolution, reports a radio journalist who covered the proceedings. What was the reason behind this Gulf War? As per former Watergate investigator Scott Armstrong.
There is a $ 200 billion secret agreement between the USA and Saudi Arabia, Armstrong documented, assuring a permanent US military presence in the Middle East through a staggering program of covert base-building. The deal, says Armstrong, creates a "pre-troops and (fresh) water." However,, it also ties the US Military to the Saudi Monarchy because if the Royal Family loses power the big bucks deal is blown. "Earlier versions of these agreements had set the stage for US intervention in the Persian Gulf War, probably making it inevitable, " wrote Armstrong. And More ominous: "These secret agreements. . . make US involvement in future Middle East conflicts unavoidable." On January 16, 1991, Bush ordered a massive bombing attack against Iraq. In the ensuing saturation media coverage of the war, mentions of the Glaspie green-light to Saddam Hussein cropped up in passing but by and large there was little discussion of US policy toward prior to the conflict.
An American newspaper Metro ran a piece by Village Voice reporter Murray Waas detailing how Glaspie's attitude toward Iraq's "border dispute" with Kuwait was hardly an anomaly. In the months leading up to the invasion, administration officials repeatedly swore off use of force against Iraq. Secretary of State James Baker even went so far to offer what sounded like a rationalization for Iraqi use of chemical weapons. He reported to a Senate Committee Saddam Hussein's explanation that chemical weapons were his only deterrent against Nuclear attack. "I am not taking sides," said Baker-an astonishing statement in light of events that followed. "I am just stating that. Another story ran by Metro was about as to how Silicon Valley 's original high tech company, Hewlett-Packard, sold computers to Iraq knowing that they would be used in ballistic missiles development. Numerous US companies , the article reported, sold military technology to Iraq right up until the international embargo came down after the invasion of Kuwait.
German corporations were far worse offenders. Those companies under the jurisdiction of America's close ally were directly responsible for Iraq's chemical weapon-making ability. Was Bush deliberately trying to get the US into a war, to satisfy yet another cryptic agenda? Waas wrote off the Bushian pro-Iraq stance as a diplomatic blunder, albeit one of history's worst. Perhaps so. The Vietnam war was half a decade old when the Pentagon Papers leaked out to confirmwhat a sizeable segment of the country suspected: the administration's public reasons for throwing the countryinto that war were simply sham. Perhaps someday a "Pentagon Papers II" will appear, exposing how the country was fooled into the Persian Gulf War.
Whatever the reasons for risking thousands of Ameircan lives (and taking thousands of Iraqi lives, including innumerable civilians that includes 500,000 Iraqi children) Bush.Sr. managed the war propaganda well (as his son Bush Jr. doing in Afghanistan). The press was as it is now in Afghanistan, tightly controlled and seem to accept its bitter medicine with disturbing calm. Meanwhile, Bush beaten away on his theme of us against him, Saddam Hussein as now in Afghanistan and again in Iraq but this time by Bush Jr. When one goes through a database of Newspaper Articles from the year 1987 through mid 1990, the single largest subheading in Bush. Sr's entry was "Investigations." In time his life and career will be the subject of hundreds of books. As a Kissinger protege, Nixon stooge, oil baron, CIA agent, Reaganite, Trilateralist, invader of foreign countries, coddler of fascisits, family friend of a brainwashed assassin, president of the United States, and member of a secret society, there is no realm of conspiracy theory that cannot find a comfortablespot for George Bush. Sr. He is an embodiment of conspiracy. Maybe some of those future books will show that those eccentric, incredible theories were tinged with the flavour of truth, and the part he played in reshaping Ameirca will be illuminated a little bit brighter.
"UNQUOTE"
References/Notes:
1 - Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free) by Arundhati Roy Presented in New York City at The Riverside Church May 13, 2003 Published on Sunday, May 18, 2003 by CommonDreams.org Copyright 2003 by Arundhati Roy {1}
http://www.cesr.org/
Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free), by Arundhati Roy {1}
http://cesr.org/arundhatiroytranscript
Transcript of full speech by Arundhati Roy in San Francisco, California on August 16th, 2004. Copyright 2004 Arundhati Roy. For permission to reprint contact arnove@igc.org
2 - Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes by Jonathan Vankin by Dell Publishing, New York.
3 - "Project Censored" by Peter Dale Scott and Craig Mc Laughlin, Syracuse New Times.
4 - The Hidden Agenda Behind the Gulf War by Salinger and Laurent.
5 - How America Lost Kuwait by Murray Waas, San Jose Metro.
6 - "The H-P Connection" Jonathan Vankin.
7 - The Israeli Secret Secret Service by Richard Deacon published by Hamish Hamilton in Great Britain.
8 - Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 by Bob Woodward published by Pocket Books.
9 - An Afghanistan Primer: The Good, the Bad and the...VERY Bad by Eric Margolis.
10 - 13 Questions for Bush about America's Anti-terrorism Crusade Martin A. Lee, AlterNet September 28, 2001Martin A. Lee (martinalee17@yahoo.com) is the author of Acid Dreams and The Beast Reawakens.
11 - Annals of National Security King's Ransom, How vulnerable are the Saudi royals? By Seymour M. Hersh dated 2001-10-22.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?011022fa_FACT1
12 - Some thoughts for America's hawks By Hasan Abbas, Encounters Daily Dawn Karachi-Pakistan.
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