[Marxism] Fw: Saddam may spill the beans

["John O'Neill" <johnfergaloneill@xxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: John O'Neill <johnfergaloneill@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: marxism <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 1:50 AM
Subject: Saddam may spill the beans


> Saddam may spill the beans
> Vincent Browne
> Twenty years ago next Saturday, Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein held a
> secret meeting in Baghdad. Mr Rumsfeld was then the special envoy of the
> then US president Ronald Reagan.
> It was at a time when Iraq was at war with Iran. During that meeting, Mr
> Rumsfeld assured the Iraqi president Washington would regard "any major
> reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West," according
> to the National Security Directive that was Mr Rumsfeld's talking points
> notes.
> The meeting led to the resumption of diplomatic relations between America
> and Iraq, which had been broken off in 1967 as a consequence of the
> Arab-Israeli war.
> Mr Rumsfeld has since maintained that during this meeting with Saddam
> Hussein, he expressed concern about Iraq's use of chemical and biological
> weapons in the war against Iran. The release of the minutes of the meeting
> by the National Security Archive in Washington shows this not to be true.
> When Saddam Hussein comes to trial in Iraq or wherever for his "crimes
> against humanity" he may well spill the beans on those who aided, abetted
> and armed him in the commission of those crimes. In particular, he may be
> able to disclose the extent of the assistance he got from the United
States
> by the administration that included George Bush snr as vice-president and
> indeed the administration led by the same George Bush snr after he became
> president in 1989.
> Saddam Hussein's connections with Washington go back to 1959, when the CIA
> backed an assassination attempt against the then Iraqi prime minister Gen
> Abd al-Karim Qasim who had overthrown the American-backed monarchy the
year
> before - Saddam was one of those backed by the CIA in the coup attempt.
That
> failed but another coup succeeded a few years later and Saddam was one of
> the major beneficiaries.
> Following that Rumsfeld-Hussein meeting of 20 years ago, the Americans
> provided military intelligence and arms to Iraq. This was at a time when
the
> Americans were getting regular reports of the use by Saddam of chemical
and
> biological weapons in the war against Iran. Around $1.5 billion worth of
> weapons equipment and technology, including items applicable to Iraq's
> nuclear or biological-weapons programme, such as anthrax strains and
> pesticides, were provided in the years immediately afterwards. A Chilean
> arms company, Cardoen, was used by the CIA to provide Iraq with cluster
> bombs.
> The Americans provided Iraq with military intelligence on Iran's military
> plans and army locations. They removed Iraq from the State Department
> terrorist list and kept Iraq off that list, knowing that in 1985 Iraq was
> shielding well-known terrorists, including Abu Abbas, leader of the
> Palestine Liberation Front, who had masterminded the hijacking of the
cruise
> ship Achille Lauro, which resulted in the killing of an American tourist.
> A study undertaken by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, an
> affiliate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, examined documents
> relating to the Commerce Department's approval of 771 licences for the
> export of $1.5 billion worth of goods to Iraq from 1985 to 1990. All of
the
> items were "dual-use" products, those that could have either civilian or
> military applications.
> This assistance continued right through the period in March 1988 when
Saddam
> used poison gas against "his own people", the Kurds, and killed some 5,000
> Kurdish non-combatants in Halabja.
> Saddam may also like to recall at his trial how the American ambassador to
> Iraq, April Glaspie, told him a week before he invaded Kuwait in August
1990
> that the US had "no opinion" on Iraq's border dispute with Kuwait, thereby
> signalling that, as with his use of chemical and biological weapons
against
> the Iranians and the Kurds, the US would turn a blind eye to whatever he
did
> to his other neighbour.
> Saddam Hussein should indeed be put on trial for his crimes against
> humanity, all of them. And along with him on trial should be those that
> aided and abetted him in those monstrous atrocities.
> The most monstrous of those atrocities was that war he instigated by
> invading Iran in September 1980, just as he had invaded Kuwait 11 years
> later. It was a war he pursued for eight years, the longest conventional
war
> of the 20th century. In the course of that war, 375,000 Iraqis and as many
> as one million Iranians were killed or wounded. Nothing else that Saddam
> Hussein did in the course of his tyranny from 1979 to 2003 comes near the
> depredations of that period from 1980 to 1988.
> Were Iran to be precluded from the prosecution of Saddam Hussein for war
> crimes, it would be an injustice.
>
>



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