Randi absolutely going off on US-Iraq timeline!

[gratuitous]

Right now she's running down the 1980s of relations between the Reagan administration and Saddam Hussein.

A coupla highlights:

Donald Rumsfeld, former and future Defense Secretary meets with Saddam Hussein in 1983 to assure him of continued U.S. support for his ongoing war against Iran. At the time, Rumsfeld was a pharmaceutical company executive. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on Logan Act violations (that is, private citizens are forbidden from conducting U.S. foreign policy)?

On through the 1980s, and details of sales of weapons, dual-use materials, chemicals, and the know-how to use and weaponize them, being sold to Saddam or his neighbors for resale to Saddam for use against the Kurds and Iran.

The U.S. is the only member nation of the UN not to sign on to the UN resolution condemning Saddam for using chemical weapons.

Station break, and we're only up to 1988. Randi says she has the whole timeline at her website, complete with citations and links.

[cthrumatrix]

1. Randi can do this ...but NBC, CBS, ABC & Faux can't....... go figure

[tk2kewl]

2. gotta be "fair and balanced"

which means 25% truth 75% counter-spin

[gratuitous]

3. On to the Bush I Administration

1988, the U.S. sells more mustard gas fixings to Saddam for use against Iran. DIA is intensively involved in battle planning with the Saddam regime, as well as selling chemical weapons such as sarin, mustard gas and anthrax.

In the last major battle of the war, 65,000 Iranians are gassed to death. With gas supplied by us. After a cease-fire is declared, Saddam gasses the Kurds. In September 1988, the Department of Commerce okays the sale of $1.5 million in additional chemicals to Saddam, knowing that he's been using these chemicals in gas warfare in violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1925.

On to 1990 and the lead-up to the invasion of Kuwait.

[gratuitous]

4. Oops, I forgot to mention

Dow Chemical is the salesman of the chemicals to Saddam.

The build-up of Saddam into an aggressive power in the Middle East, as reported by Ted Koppel, is due almost entirely to the efforts of Vice President and then President George HW Bush. Koppel, of course, no longer remembers his own reporting, and is as mystified as anyone why Saddam would be so belligerent. Unless, of course, it's because he's a bad, bad man.

Last station break. I'm outta here.