The Real Reason Saddam was Executed: Embarassment to the US.

[Pure]

Saddam was a valued friend and ally of the US in the 1980s, and Reagan removed Iraq from the list of terrorist supporting nations.
Saddam was armed by the Americans and given intelligence to help him use chemical weapons, whose constituents were supplied by US companies. The US sold anthrax samples to him.

This is NOT the man you want sitting in prison writing his memoirs!

An account of US Iraq relations in the 1980s is at this site:

including the famous pic of rumsfeld shaking hands with saddam

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm


CHRONOLOGY FOR SUPPLYING WEAPONS TO IRAQ
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php


What follows is an accurate chronology of United States involvement in the arming of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war 1980-88.


September, 1980. Iraq invades Iran. The beginning of the Iraq-Iran war. [8]

February, 1982. Despite objections from congress, President Reagan removes Iraq from its list of known terrorist countries. [1]

December, 1982. Hughes Aircraft ships 60 Defender helicopters to Iraq. [9]

1982-1988. Defense Intelligence Agency provides detailed information for Iraq on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb damage assessments. [4]

November, 1983. A National Security Directive states that the U.S would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing its war with Iran. [1] & [15]

November, 1983. Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of Italy and its Branch in Atlanta begin to funnel $5 billion in unreported loans to Iraq. Iraq, with the blessing and official approval of the US government, purchased computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods for Iraq's missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. [14]

October, 1983. The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States weapons, including Howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violated the Arms Export Control Act. [16]

November 1983. George Schultz, the Secretary of State, is given intelligence reports showing that Iraqi troops are daily using chemical weapons against the Iranians. [1]

Donald Rumsfeld -Reagan's Envoy- provided Iraq withchemical & biological weapons
December 20, 1983. Donald Rumsfeld , then a civilian and now Defense Secretary, meets with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US friendship and materials support. [1] & [15]

July, 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. [19]

January 14, 1984. State Department memo acknowledges United States shipment of "dual-use" export hardware and technology. Dual use items are civilian items such as heavy trucks, armored ambulances and communications gear as well as industrial technology that can have a military application. [2]

March, 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the US becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons. [10]

May, 1986. The US Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax. [3]

May, 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq. [7]

March, 1987. President Reagan bows to the findings of the Tower Commission admitting the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. Oliver North uses the profits from the sale to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. [17]

Late 1987. The Iraqi Air Force begins using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq. [1]

February, 1988. Saddam Hussein begins the "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq. The Iraq regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages. [8]

April, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of chemicals used in manufacture of mustard gas. [7]

August, 1988. Four major battles were fought from April to August 1988, in which the Iraqis massively and effectively used chemical weapons to defeat the Iranians. Nerve gas and blister agents such as mustard gas are used. By this time the US Defense Intelligence Agency is heavily involved with Saddam Hussein in battle plan assistance, intelligence gathering and post battle debriefing. In the last major battle with of the war, 65,000 Iranians are killed, many with poison gas. Use of chemical weapons in war is in violation of the Geneva accords of 1925. [6] & [13]

August, 1988. Iraq and Iran declare a cease fire. [8]

August, 1988. Five days after the cease fire Saddam Hussein sends his planes and helicopters to northern Iraq to begin massive chemical attacks against the Kurds. [8]

September, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq. [7]

September, 1988. Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State: "The US-Iraqi relationship is... important to our long-term political and economic objectives." [15]

December, 1988. Dow chemical sells $1.5 million in pesticides to Iraq despite knowledge that these would be used in chemical weapons. [1]
===

References:
1.Washingtonpost.com. December 30, 2002
2.Jonathan Broder. Nuclear times, Winter 1990-91
3.Kurt Nimno. AlterNet. September 23, 2002
4.Newyorktimes.com. August 29, 2002
5.ABC Nightline. June9, 1992
6.Counter Punch, October 10, 2002
7.Riegle Report: Dual Use Exports. Senate Committee on Banking. May 25, 1994
8.Timeline: A walk Through Iraq's History. U.S. Department of State
9.Doing Business: The Arming of Iraq. Daniel Robichear
10.Glen Rangwala. Labor Left Briefing, 16 September, 2002
11.Financial Times of London. July 3, 1991
12.Elson E. Boles. Counter Punch. October 10, 2002
13.Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988. Iranchamber.com
14.Columbia Journalism Review. March/April 1993. Iraqgate
15.Times Online. December 31, 2002. How U.S. Helped Iraq Build Deadly Arsenal
16.Bush's Secret Mission. The New Yorker Magazine. November 2, 1992
17.Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia: Iran-Contra Affair
18.Congressional Record. July 27, 1992. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez
19.Bob Woodward. CIA Aiding Iraq in Gulf War. Washington Post. 15 December, 1986
20.Case Study: The Anfal Campaign. www.gendercide.com

 

[Huckleman2000]

Like Osama Bin Laden, too often the greatest monsters are the ones we create ourselves.

Someday, when those who swept the foreign policy crimes of the Reagan/Bush years under the rug have lost their grasp on the tentacles of power, we'll see in full the disasters they wrought.

 

[only_more_so]

Actually, the real reason he was hanged was because the people of Iraq found him guilty of mass murder.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Another view...

Published on Saturday, December 30, 2006 by the Independent/UK
A Dictator Created Then Destroyed by America
by Robert Fisk

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalized and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.

"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.

It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.

But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".

When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.

But we will have got away with it.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington

I don't know that it's so different from the first...

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I saw a very disturbing story on the front page of the afternoon paper while I was at the grocery store. It read something like, "U.S. Was Instrumental In the Saddam Trial and Conviction." If he was tried by the Iraqi courts, why was the U.S. instrumental?

It seems to me Saddam was hanged more out of Revenge than Justice. It's a sad commentary on GW Bush and his "cowboy" foreign policy that he got us into the war to begin with, and sadder still that the papers are crowing about the execution.

 

[only_more_so]

I saw a very disturbing story on the front page of the afternoon paper while I was at the grocery store. It read something like, "U.S. Was Instrumental In the Saddam Trial and Conviction." If he was tried by the Iraqi courts, why was the U.S. instrumental?

Well, I believe it goes without saying that had the US not attacked Iraq (whatever the "real" reason) that Saddam would still be in power in Iraq. That he was tried at all was because the US deposed him. So I would say that is pretty instrumental.

 

[Aurora Black]

Right now I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

[Jagged]

Yeah can't having him letting out any of those secrets everyone knows......he wasn't the first scum back the United States had as an ally and he won't be the last. He killed Iranians that was his only redeeming feature. We have meddled in the Middle East (and many other places) along with the Europeans. My only hope is we can be alittle bit better about things.


The enemy of my enemy is my friend...I never heard anything about them being a good guy.


President Roosevelt fought along side the Soviets to defeat the Nazis. When you compare those groups you may as well flip a coin to pick an ally.