The Myth exploded...

"Setting the Records Straight on Who Armed Saddam"
By Doug Patton


Are you as weary as I am of hearing those who opposed the war with Iraq repeat the phrase “America armed Saddam”?

Well, take a short trip with me down memory lane to the halls of the United Nations. Do you remember all that whining and gnashing of teeth among the assembled states on the U.N. Security Council last fall and again this winter over the “warmongering” Americans and our “cowboy” president?

Do you remember the nations who protested the loudest? Do you remember what they said? Something about, “give inspections a chance” (read “give appeasement a chance”).

The people protesting the loudest included the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese and, of course, our old friends, the French. With everything in their diplomatic arsenal, these nations stood in the way of removing Saddam Hussein. France, realizing it could not persuade the Bush administration to continue waiting on Han Blix to find something, even threatened to veto any resolution to use force against the Iraqi tyrant.

And all the while from the left we heard the refrain, “America armed Saddam.” Well, the truth can now be told. The current issue of The Weekly Standard, quoting from a study done by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, provides a breakdown of which nations supplied weapons to Iraq between 1973 and 2002.

Number one, by far, was the former Soviet Union (Russia) with a whopping 57 percent. Next came peace-loving France with 13 percent, followed by China at 12 percent, Czechoslovakia at 7 percent, Poland with 4 percent and Brazil with 2 percent.

Bringing up the rear were Egypt, Romania, Denmark, Libya and those warmongering cowboys, the United States of America, with a paltry 1 percent each.


To their credit and my surprise, the Germans apparently have been behaving themselves for the last 30 years (although it is worth noting that half of them were behind the Iron Curtain for the majority of that time).

Hypocrisy seems to be the major export of the nations at the top of this list – especially the French. Just when we think they can’t disappoint us any further, they hit a new low.

We have known all along that France provided the nuclear materials Saddam used to build the reactor the Israelis had to destroy in 1981.

Now we learn from a British newspaper, The Sunday Times, that files found in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry in Baghdad reveal that the government of Jacques Chirac has been funneling information to Saddam Hussein gleaned from the United States, even from meetings with President Bush himself.

Apparently, the information so conveniently supplied by the French kept Saddam briefed on every development of U.S. planning and may have helped him prepare for war. One report warned of an American “attempt to involve Iraq with terrorism” as “cover for an attack on Iraq.”

As it becomes increasingly obvious why Jacques Chirac didn’t want us poking around in the ruins of a liberated Baghdad, for fear we might find “Made in France” labels on a lot of contraband, we find ourselves in the position of having to deal with an “ally” who is completely untrustworthy.

Likewise, very little trust should be extended to Russian President Vladimir Putin in this post-war environment. While the Soviet Union is no more, and Russia is not the same sort of state it was for 70 years, the fact remains that Putin came out of that regime. In fact, he was the cold-blooded leader of the dreaded KGB.

And, of course, it is a given that China is never to be trusted.

What President Bush ultimately does about U.S. relations with these nations remains to be seen. But the next time some peacenik tells you that “America armed Saddam,” give him the facts. Not that it will make any difference.
 
Bullypulpit said:
Your examples are wars of neccessity forced by an outside aggressor. The war in Iraq was a war of choice...Based on a fabric of lies...Thus the last resort of an incompetent administration. Get over it.

Let me pose this question to you again, since you keep ignoring it:

Again, my question is, how much more diplomacy would have been satisfactory? Did we need to sit down at a table across from Saddam and let him moon Colin Powell before we broke off talks?
 
world affairs make for strange bed fellows. now if you have come up with some way to see into the future, please let the current administration know about it.
and please answer Jeffs question. jsut how much is too much in your mind? when they drop nukes on us? would that be enough to "force" us into war?

maybe you shuld run for president of france
 
BP said:
War is the last resort of the incompetent.

Repeated regurgitation of cliches is typically the first resort of those with an inability to formulate creative and original thoughts.

BP said:
War is the last resort of the incompetent. The administration did not play diplomacy out to the end.

Your inconsistency is blatant and ridiculous.

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

Hey!

Who cares?

Dictators who aren’t helping us get rid of worse dictators need to go. Each and every one of them.

A guy holds up a convenient store with his hand in his pocket, pretending it's a gun.

A cop shows up and tells him to drop the gun.

The guy says, "no", and turns in an threatening manner towards the cop.

The cop shoots him.

Not only am I supposed to feel sorry for the robber, but also I should think the cop should be punished? Fuck that. One would have to be an imbecile to think like that.

Answer these questions though:
Did the President know more or less for a fact that Saddam Hussein was not in possession of WMD pre-invasion? (Did the cop know full well the guy didn’t have a gun?)
If so, why didn’t they plant any? Why would they deliberate set themselves up for this very occurrence?

Some advice:

Lose the hate child. Perpetual negativism depresses the immune system allowing malformed cells with replication errors to reproduce unchecked and develop it malignant cancerous tumors.
 
Bullypulpit said:
I find it difficult to believe that you still support a president who took us to war on false pretenses. He sent our troops into harms way on a tissue of lies. It happened, so get over it.

As for "the other justifications" they were trotted out only after it became clear that the WMD house of cards was falling apart. Like it or not, that's what happened...Some 29 times.

Prove an out and out lie, or that he led a coverup of lies, bet you can't.
 
Bullypulpit said:
War is the last resort of the incompetent. The administration did not play diplomacy out to the end. As for Saddam's gassing of Kurdish villages, while tragic, the technology for producing such weapons was deliverd into Saddam's hands by the US during Iraq's war with Iran. In fact, Rummy helped with the deal. Convenient that you forget such historical side bars.

Context, historical context or have you not heard of such a term?

In the end Sadaam bit the hand that fed him so we euthanized him, shouldn't mess with the biggest bad ass on the block I say.
 
Forgive my fuzzy memory, but didn't the doddering old clown Walter Cronkite bust some story, in the heat of the election (surprise, surprise), that - quite contrary to his intentions - actually went a long way toward explaining the missing WMDs?

It seems to me it had something to do with the Russians sneaking weapons out of Iraq in order to cover up their complicity in the oil-for-food scandal. Can anyone refresh my recollection?

Incidentally, I'm trying to "point" some of the board members for their excellent posts - in this thread and elsewhere. However, Joz and I are still fumbling around in the fog a bit after our computer problems. USMB rocks, and it's good to be back!
 
Sir Evil said:
Good to have you back MM! no worries digging up the old posts for Bully, he is just up to his old ways of grabbing at anything out there to make a mountain out of a mole hill!



Thanks, SE!

Bully is truly an American treasure, isn't he? He's like a damn soap opera. If you missed him for six months, you can get right back into the gist of his posts, because he never really changes.

Er...uh.... not that I ever really watched soaps or anything....
:)
 

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