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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Suma who wrote (20755)	11/11/2004 6:10:24 PM
From: Alan Smithee	Respond to of 90947

No I have not forgotten. Nor how we supported him in the war against Iran. Rumsfeld even visited Saddam. It's strange to me how quickly one can change sides.. expediency.. to the highest bidder ? Do you ever wonder at the fact that the Soviet Union was once this country's mortal enemy and now Russia, with a former Soviet KGB apparatchik at the helm, is aligned in many ways with our interests? Things change Suma. Why do you find it necessary to find fault with our country for having freed Iraq from a despot? What relevance is it that we supported Iraq in the war with Iran? I have no idea how old you are, but if you were around during the Carter years, when the radical Iranians overthrew the Shah of Iran and took our embassy workers hostage(1979), you might have some understanding why we might have supported Saddam Hussein at that time (1980-1988).

To: Suma who wrote (20755)	11/11/2004 7:10:18 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Context, Suma, context. The US was no friend of Saddam's BEFORE the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the Iran-Iraq War. It was really hard to decide who we should support in that war. Really, it would have been nice if BOTH sides had lost. But the Iranians DID take almost an entire US Embassy hostage. That tilted the scales. Let it be noted that we owe our northern neighbor a "Thank You!" here for that "almost". The took in escapees from the American Embassy, hid them, issued them Canadian diplomatic passports, found an excuse to close down THEIR Iranian embassy, and smuggled out those Americans with their own staff.

To: Suma who wrote (20755)	11/12/2004 8:25:07 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

"Rumsfeld even visited Saddam." And precisely what was that visit all about? Got links? Did he not tell Saddam about the concerns our government had about his WMD's at the request of the government during that visit? _____________________________________________________________ ....Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, "was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs," according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz. The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire "to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing," remained "undiminished." "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions.".... ....An explicit purpose of Rumsfeld's return trip in March 1984, the once-secret documents reveal for the first time, was to ease the strain created by a U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons..... ....When details of Rumsfeld's December trip came to light last year, the defense secretary told CNN that he had "cautioned" Saddam Hussein about the use of chemical weapons.... washingtonpost.com