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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (128459)	4/5/2004 7:50:32 AM
From: Noel de Leon	Respond to of 281500

Interesting letter mostly because of what wasn't written. "Let's see what I've learned. For most Americans and Europeans the beginning came in August 1990 when Saddam suddenly invaded Kuwait. That he was simply the latest of a succession of military dictators who murdered the first two kings, were themselves murdered by successors, eventually leaving the whole of Iraq in the hands of this Baathite socialist, this most repressive dictator who began by trying to suppress, kill or banish the Shia Muslims and thus provoked a war with Iran, which lasted eight years. Saddam emerged as the victor. He next thought to put an end to the age-long campaign over the Kurds in the north to become an independent nation, using artillery and bombing planes to attack several hundred villages. More than 80 of them were sprayed with poison gas, causing a hundred thousand Kurds to flee into Turkey." John Simpson, BBC reported on the gassing of the Kurds when it happened. The USA was Iraq's ally at the time, nothing happened to disturb the world order. "Much was found but much lay hidden. Saddam grew increasingly impatient, not to say defiant, of all the resolutions and of the inspectors and he physically stopped them at picked sites, denying the military uses of much suspect material, and by the middle of his second term President Clinton, now, was ready to propose another ultimatum for Saddam. Unfortunately whatever commanding authority Clinton might have had to follow through was ruined by the sordid revelations of his Lewinsky affair." Which the Republicans used to indirectly stifle foreign policy. "So the next president - George W Bush - came to the White House and found on his hands this hugely humiliating problem." Humiliating because Iraq was a direct result of Republican policy under Bush I.