Let's just say you're absolutely right.. that the Reagan administration sold chemical and biological weapons to Saddam out of some incredibly dysfunctional policy..
Accepting it would be a first step.
Then it's incumbent upon the US to fix that error and remove the cancer that y'all claim we're responsible for creating
Possibly. We can argue that right afterwards.
My view is that the entire argument of who is responsible for Saddam prior to 1990 is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT to the issue at hand
It is relevant to the argument of your president re "Saddam is an evil man who gassed Kurds and Iranians" etc. Whatever character or otherworldly affiliation Saddam has, he had it just as bad when the US was giving him chemical and biological capabilities. And the US is not in a position to say "Oh poor poor Iranians who were gassed" when they knew full well what Saddam would do with the stuff.
The August 18 edition of the New York Times reported that, according to “senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program”, “Though senior officials of the Reagan administration publicly condemned Iraq's employment of mustard gas, sarin, VX and other poisonous agents, the American military officers said President Reagan, Vice President George Bush and senior national security aides never withdrew their support for the highly classified program.”
According to “a former participant in the program”, “Senior Reagan administration officials did nothing to interfere with the continuation of the program.”
nytimes.com
A secret State Department assessment acknowledged, “Human rights and chemical weapons use aside, in many respects our political and economic interests run parallel with those of Iraq.”
ksg.harvard.edu
It is important to accept these. Then we can move forward as to what is the best course of action, not only in the case of Iraq but also other sources of menace around the world.
So screw France, Russia, and Germany, and anyone else who keeps using every maschination to buy Saddam another day in power..
Calm yourself Hawk. You think they are trying to keep Saddam in power. The rest of the world, notably the millions who marched the other weekend, think these countries are trying to restrain the trigger-happy oil-junkie that the US has become. |
