Iraq Facts

We don't intend to confuse you, but we thought we'd throw some reality into the discussion

by Steven Fornal

BOY... HAVE YOU BEEN been burning the midnight oil keeping up with the US propaganda machine outshittings? ! ? !

Hussein is brutal? So are the leaders of Turkey (massacre of Kurds), Israel (with more unheeded resolutions than any other nation; which attacked Iraq and destroyed a nuclear facility used for medical and energy research); Saudi Arabia/Yemen/Kuwait, etc (all anti-female as equal; monarchy/elite-serving governance; which brutally subdue opposition).

Iraq initiated the 1980 war with Iran due to the latter's refusal to uphold the Algiers Accord signed in 1975 with respect to borders, Shatt al Arab gulfport, and cross border attacks. With the return of Ayatollah Komeini to Iran, calls and active/monetary assistance went out to the Kurds and Shiite Muslims to violently overthrow the Iraqi government. Yes, Hussein gassed civilians. Of course, Israel rockets civilian areas nearly daily to weed out the "suspected" militants among them; (shall we vote on what is the worst way to die?) Five Iraqi towns came under constant artillery barrages; until becoming daily just prior to war. Yes, Iraq initiated the war. Within six days Iraq offered Iran a cease fire. Iran refused. The US supplied satellite intelligence re troop movement/location to Iraq and actively urged the world to boycott these two nations vis-a-vis weapons sales even as the US and Israel conspired to supply weapons to Iran (remember the Iran/Contra fiasco?). It's called destabilizing the oil rich region which forces prices higher which benefits oil company stockholders and home-spun oil producers (read Bush and Bush).

As for Kuwait...Slant drilling for several years thieved Iraqi oil supplies. Proof was voluminous and presented to UN, Arab League and other world bodies. Nothing was done. Saddam invaded. Within several days offered ceasefire (always to get to negotiations which had been denied) which was refused per US demands.

The incubator story (of premies being dumped) has been fully exposed as sham perpetrated by daughter of Kuwaiti diplomat...funny how lies always make the front page but the truth rarely sees the light of coverage.

The supposed evidence of Iraqi troop build up along Saudi borders (after Kuwaiti invasion) which prompted the 1990 Gulf War has been fully exposed as sham as foreign newspapers showed the area via their own paid for satellite pix...nothing there.

The US sold Iraq many lethal biological cultures for bioweapons research; a fact well documented.

If the verbiage applied to Hussein is enough to go to war...Then Israel must be eliminated from the face of the earth; as everything attributed to Saddam has been "business as usual" manyfold times worse for Israeli leaders since inception.

Think about it: A nation the size and with the population of California a threat?! Iraq's alleged development of "manned and unmanned aerial vehicles" (read small planes/drones with very limited range) a threat?! Iraq's "holy nuclear warriors" (with any nuclear bomb capability over a decade away according to CIA reports) a threat?! President Bush's rationale for going to war is premised upon Iraq's, "past and present actions, by its technological capabilities..." a threat?! Then the U.S. with its past use of weapons of mass destruction and technological capabilities is a threat that justifies any transgression against it.

Man-oh-man...you've bought into it big time! Gullable comes to mind. You still wave the flag for the biggest terrorist nation in the world...The world according to the GOP is rarely as black-and-white as their collective imagination can muster.

IRAQ/SADDAM HUSSEIN FACTS

• 1932 Independence gained from League of Nations Mandate under British Administration.
  
  
• 1958 Nationalist Military Officers' Revolution overthrows monarchy. Republic established.
  
  
• 1967 Iraq cuts off diplomatic relations with the United States over its support of Israel in the Six Day War.
  
  
• 1968 Saddam Hussein assumes Presidency.
  
  
• 1975 Iraq signs the 1975 Algiers Accord (with Iran) hoping "to settle three issues: the disputed border territories of Zain al-Qaws and Saif Saad, both strategic heights overlooking the Iraqi plains and occupied by Iran; the question of sovereignty over the Shatt al Arab waterway, Iraq's only access to the Persian Gulf oil-shipping lanes; and, most important, the Kurdish revolt in the north, heavily and which had been covertly supported by Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi in Iran and Israel and the United States."1
  
  
• 1979 Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns from exile and immediately sets out to export Islamic Revolution "calling on Iraqi Shiites to liberate Iraq from its infidel government and inciting them to acts of terrorism."2 Near daily artillery shelling of Iraqi territory by Iranian Army begins.
  
  
• 1980 During the Summer of 1980 Iran amasses its army along border with Iraq. Artillery barrages aimed at oil installations. On 4 September, Iraqi border towns Khanaqin, Mandali, Naft, Khaneh and Zarbatiyah. Iraq protested the attacks and called on Iranian government to abide by the 1975 Algiers Accord or occupying troops would be forcibly removed. Iran "struck oil installations, attacked Mandali from the air, fired on Iraqi ships in the Shatt al Arab, and shelled Basra, Iraq's primary port."3 On 22 September 1980, Saddam Hussein launches an invasion of Iran; within six days offers cease fire which was rejected by Iran.
  
  
• 1981 On 7 June 1981, while at war with Iran, Iraqi domestic nuclear facilities were destroyed by Israeli air raid via pre-emptive strike. 19 June 1981, UN Security Council Resolution 487 condemned Israel for "clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct." It should be noted that, unlike Israel, Iraq had been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since its inception in 1970.
  
  
• 1982 The United States extends credits ($750 million) to Iraq to buy American agricultural products.
  
  
• 1983 U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld, visits Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Washington announces it will actively encourage allies to stop all weapon shipments to Iran.
  
  
• 1985 United States and Iraq formally resume diplomatic relations. A U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs publication entitled "Gist": Iran-Iraq War states, in part "The US does not permit US arms and munitions to be shipped to either belligerent and has discouraged all free-world arms shipments to Iran because, unlike Iraq, Iran is adamantly opposed to negotiations or a mediated end to the conflict."4
  
  
• 1986 The Iran/Iraq War is ended. It should be noted that during the Iran/Iraq War, the United States of America provided satellite intelligence on Iranian ground troop positions even as we supplied Iran with weapons (in defiance of U.S. law ergo Iran-Contra fiasco).
  
  
• 1989 Iraq issues formal protest to the UN and OPEC regarding Kuwait's slant-drilling practices that "thieve" oil from Iraqi oil fields.

It should be noted that, "prior to Hussein's attack on Kuwait, the Bush administration and its predecessors treated (Hussein) as an amiable friend, encouraging trade with his regime and credits to enable it to purchase U.S. goods. Before that, Washington had supported his invasion of Iran, and then tilted so far towards Iraq in the Gulf War that military forces were sent to 'protect shipping' from Iran...persisting in this course even after the USS Stark was attacked in 1987 by Iraqi aircraft...On August 13, 1990 the New York Times finally acknowledged that Iraq had reached its heights of power 'with American acquiescence and sometines its help,' including a thriving grain trade with American farmers, cooperation with United States intelligence agencies, oil sales to American refiners that helped finance its military and muted White House criticism of its Human Rights and war atrocities."5

1. Foreign Policy; Number 66; Spring 1987; "Who Started the War?" by Nita M. Renfrew; page 99
   
   
2. OpCit; page 101
   
   
3. OpCit; page 103
   
   
4. Foreign Affairs; Winter 1986/87; Vol. 65, No.2; "Iraq At War" by Milton Viorst; page 362.
   
   
5. "Deterring Democracy" 1991; Noam Chomsky; Chapter 6: Nefarious Aggression

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