Posted on 11/01/2007 5:40:42 PM PDT by james500
Another manufactured Leftist lie with no bases in fact. Bin Laden's forces during the Afghan war were rabidly anti American and had no contact with US intelligence. They were supported by the Saudis and the Pakis. In fact, US agents passing thur Bin Laden's territory were warned to hide the fact they were Americans or Binny would have them killed.
- I have no idea whether Reagan “turned a blind eye” to this massacre nor, I suspect do you, seeing that it happened two decades ago involving a President long since dead.
However, if you want to discuss Presidents who really turned a blind eye to massacres, you might want to start with Clinton and his Administration’s decision to burn to death some 82 men, women and children at Waco,Texas in 1993. As I recall, Clinton claimed that it wasn’t his fault, he was out of the loop and that, like Sgt. Shultz on the old TV show Hogan’s Heroes, “he knew nothing”. For that one he referred all queries to old Janet “Shake n’ Bake” Reno so she could take the fall.
However, his crowning achievement in the blind eye department occurred in 1994 when he ordered Madeleine Albright to the UN so she could successfully stonewall any international action which would have stopped the genocide in Rwanda. I don’t think any President has ever come close to matching Clinton’s record in this “blind eye” instance which directly led to the deaths of almost one million Tutsi’s.
Whoever said that Clinton didn’t leave a legacy of accomplishments?
Does anyone besides the moveon.org/codepink crowd believe a word CBS spits out since their entire credibility has been in the crapper for so long?
Gee, all those Kurds murdered by Saddam’s chemical weapons...must have been a figment of our imagination.
By ignoring it. Just like they ignored the rest of the quarter million Kurds Hussein systemically slaughtered in the late 1980's. Remember, CBS isn't in the news business. They're in the re-writing history business.
Who ignored the gassing of the Kurds in 1988? Some history for you guys...
- Pre1980: Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War Iraq severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. And in late 1979 the US State Department put Iraq on its list of nations sponsoring terrorism because of ties to Palestinian nationalist groups.
- September 1980: The Iran-Iraq war begins as Iraqi forces invade Iran to capture the Iranian providence Khuzestan.
- Beginning of 1982: The Iraqi offensive stalls and the Iranians begin a counter offensive.
- February 1982: The US State Department removes Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism. The removal made Iraq eligible for U.S. dual-use and military technology.
- June, 1983: Iraq begins using mustard gas and Tabun nerve agents against Iranian forces.
- Two national security memos confirm US knowledge of Iraq’s “almost daily” use of chemical weapons concurrent with the Reagan Administration’s policy to support Iraq in the war.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq24.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq25.pdf
- Furthermore, a declassified CIA report notes Iraq’s use of mustard gas in August 1983, giving further credence to the suggestion that the National Security Council was well aware of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons.
Subject: CW USE IN IRAN-IRAQ WAR
- December 1983: Donald Rumsfeld goes to Baghdad as a presidential envoy to establish direct contact between the Reagan Administration and Saddam Hussein’s government.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq28.pdf
- March 5, 1984: The US publicly condemns Iraq’s chemical weapons use of chemical weapons against the Iranians. It said
“While condemning Iraq’s chemical weapons use . . . The United States finds the present Iranian regime’s intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims”
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq43.pdf
- Late March, 1984: Rumsfeld revisits Baghdad again and discusses supplying Iraq with Export-Import Bank credits giving the Iraqis much needed capital for the war.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq61.pdf
- April 1984: Iran submits a draft resolution asking the U.N. to condemn Iraq’s chemical weapons use.
- November 26, 1984: Iraq and the U.S. restore diplomatic relations.
- 1985: Between 1985 and 1990, the US Commerce Department approved many computer sales to Iraq that went directly to Saad 16, the center for Iraqi ballistic missile development As of 1991 Saad 16 reportedly contained up to 40% U.S.-origin equipment.
Report: Weapons at War - World Policy Institute - Research Project
- March 21, 1986: UN issues a decision as Add #1 to S/17911 regarding Iraqi use of chemical weapons. It stated that
Council members are profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops...[and] the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons
The US was the lone member to vote against the issuance of this statement. Furthermore, the US continually used its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council to block passage of a UN resolution that singled out Iraq as the perpetrator.
- March 1988: Iraqi mustard and nerve agent attack against the Kurdish village of Halabjah killing ~ 7,000 Kurds.
- September 8, 1988: The US Senate unanimously passes the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988 sponsored by Senators Ted Kennedy, Claiborne Pell, Al Gore, and Jesse Helms. The act cuts off from Iraq U.S. loans, military and non-military assistance, credits, credit guarantees, items subject to export controls, and U.S. imports of Iraqi oil.
Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988
- Immediately after the bill’s passage the Reagan Administration announced its opposition to the bill; Sate Department spokesman Charles Redman called the bill “premature”. The Administration works with House opponents to a House companion bill, and after numerous legislation compromises and end-of-session haggling, the Senate bill died “on the last day of the legislative session”.
CBC News: the fifth estate - The Forgotten People - One Man’s Battle
- October 2, 1989, when all international banks had cut off loans to Iraq, President Bush signed National Security Directive (NSD) 26 mandating closer links with Iraq. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsd/nsd26.pdf
- The Bush Administration also approved $6 billion in agricultural loan guarantees. These guarantees freed for Iraq hard cash to continue to buy and develop WMDs, and are suspended only on 2 August 1990, the same day that Iraq invaded Kuwait.
http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat4/150515.pdf
Conclusion: Clearly, the US supported Iraq during their war with Iran (which they started) and turned a blind eye to Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against the Iranians and Kurds. We even went so far as to protect them from UN resolutions. This, to me, was all part of the Cold War gamesmanship. We did not hesitate to jump into bed with some shady characters to achieve and upper hand geo-politically. Honestly, this doesn’t bother me so much....it’s the way it was. What bothers me is how so many people were clamoring for war with Iraq in 2002 and 2003 pointing to the gassing of the Kurds as justification; however, most seemed to forget that no one raised a finger when these events took place and the US was at the very least complicit in these and other actions by Saddam. Why? Because it was in our best interest at the time....or so we thought.
That’s not entirely true, MNJohnie. US and Iraq had a closer relationship than you realize...after all, who defended them from UN resolutions in the 80s???
Way to miss the point.
Nobody ever suggested gassing the Kurds was a major justification for the war. The act was merely the proof positive that he'd had the weapons in question and was willing to use them. His ties to al Qaeda in conjunction with his WMD ambitions were the one-two punch that finished him off. His history of brutality was just a part of the mosaic that made him somebody who needed to be destroyed.
As far as the rest, if none of what you posted bothered you so much, why go to the trouble of posting copying and pasting it? Why not cut to the chase and get to the point without the blame America garbage? So what if he was a de-facto ally at one point? So was Josef Stalin. Geo-political realities make for strange bedfellows. If Saddam didn't understand the cold, hard reality that just because we took advantage of him once didn't mean that we were in love, well... tough shit for the dictator. Once he started sponsoring training camps for jihadists to launch attacks against the United States, all bets were off (they should have been off, anyway... it took us 10 years to finally do anything about it).
And, as to your original question, who ignored the slaughter? That would be the mass media. Which is interesting, considering how they hated Reagan and "Bush's daddy" so. Saddam's genocide was their deal, right? I mean, it had to be... there's a picture of Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein shaking hands! Hussein was practically a Reagan administration cabinet member! Amazing how the mass media turned a collective blind-eye to Reagan/Bush's insidious, murderous plot to knock off the Kurds for no apparent reason.
P.S. Next time you're so moved to sign up on FR to immediately post a timeline, list a source instead of cherry-picking the PDF's you want us to see. It's terrible form, really. I'll do it for you this time, so everybody has a chance to check out the footnotes for themselves (hint: they're hardly models of objectivity).
That is a question that liberals never answer, or the fact that the Klinton administration claimed the same thing.
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