The true Iraq appeasers (Reagan, Bush I, Cheney, Rummy and Powell)

[ProSense]

PETER W. GALBRAITH

The true Iraq appeasers

By Peter W. Galbraith | August 31, 2006

IN HIS MOST recent justification of his Pentagon stewardship, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reached back to the 1930s, comparing the Bush administration's critics to those who, like US Ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy, favored appeasing Adolf Hitler. Rumsfeld avoided a more recent comparison: the appeasement of Saddam Hussein by the Reagan and first Bush administrations. The reasons for selectivity are obvious, since so many of Hussein's appeasers in the 1980s were principals in the 2003 Iraq war, including Rumsfeld.

In 1983, President Reagan initiated a strategic opening to Iraq, then in the third year of a war of attrition with neighboring Iran. Although Iraq had started the war with a blitzkrieg attack in 1980, the tide had turned by 1982 in favor of much larger Iran, and the Reagan administration was afraid Iraq might actually lose. Reagan chose Rumsfeld as his emissary to Hussein, whom he visited in December 1983 and March 1984. Inconveniently, Iraq had begun to use chemical weapons against Iran in November 1983, the first sustained use of poison gas since a 1925 treaty banning that.

Snip...

This message was reinforced by US conduct after the Rumsfeld missions. The Reagan administration offered Hussein financial credits that eventually made Iraq the third-largest recipient of US assistance. It normalized diplomatic relations and, most significantly, began providing Iraq with battlefield intelligence. Iraq used this information to target Iranian troops with chemical weapons. And when Iraq turned its chemical weapons on the Kurds in 1988, killing 5,000 in the town of Halabja, the Reagan administration sought to obscure responsibility by falsely suggesting Iran was also responsible.

On Aug. 25, 1988 -- five days after the Iran-Iraq War ended -- Iraq attacked 48 Kurdish villages more than 100 miles from Iran. Within days, the US Senate passed legislation, sponsored by Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island, to end US financial support for Hussein and to impose trade sanctions. To enhance the prospects that Reagan would sign his legislation, Pell sent me to Eastern Turkey to interview Kurdish survivors who had fled across the border. As it turned out, the Reagan administration agreed that Iraq had gassed the Kurds, but strongly opposed sanctions, or even cutting off financial assistance. Colin Powell, then the national security adviser, coordinated the Reagan administration's opposition.

The Pell bill died at the end of the congressional session in 1988, in spite of heroic efforts by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts to force it through by holding up a raft of administration nominations.

The next year, President George H.W. Bush's administration actually doubled US financial credits for Iraq. A week before Hussein invaded Kuwait, the administration vociferously opposed legislation that would have conditioned US assistance to Iraq on a commitment not to use chemical weapons and to stop the genocide against the Kurds. At the time, Dick Cheney, now vice president, was secretary of defense and a statutory member of the National Security Council that reviewed Iraq policy. By all accounts, he supported the administration's appeasement policy.

more...

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/08/31/the_true_iraq_appeasers/?p1=MEWell_Pos5

The original cabal to the current!

[The Deacon]

1. Gee

Next thing you'll suggest is that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, so pulling troops away from the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan in order to prepare for the invasion of Iraq probably contributed to the terrorist attacks in Spain, Britain and Indonesia.

[knowbody0]

2. we sold them big guns (Saddam and BinLaden)

so we could kill them with our bigger guns. It is all very surreal.

[ProSense]

3. Photo of Reagan and Aziz

On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops rolled across the border into neighboring Kuwait. The invasion prompted outrage and action from the White House where Iraq's President Saddam Hussein was reviled as a modern day Hitler, potentially more dangerous by virtue of his nuclear weapons ambitions. But Washington's view had not always been so negative....




Ronald Reagan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz meet at the White House on November 26, 1984, as the U.S. and Iraq restore diplomatic relations.

[ProSense]

4. This gang, which

includes the Bushes, is the real force behind the neocon war. Rumsfeld has a long history of immoral actions. Next to Bush and Cheney, he is the best example of immoral leadership and war crimes.