LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Glen Turner <glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au>
  To  : Michael Davies <michael@msdavies.net>
  Date: 15 Dec 2003 10:49:15 +1030

Re: They got him!

On Mon, 2003-12-15 at 09:53, Michael Davies wrote:
> The ones he used against the kurds killing thousands just after the Gulf
> War finished.

Then why did Richard Butler have so much trouble finding
evidence of weapons of mass destruction?

Perhaps you are thinking of the Iraq's use of gas in the
Iraq-Iran war?  Mustard gas was used against Iranian forces
on the strategic Fao peninsular in 1986.  Sarin was used
on the Iraqi town of Halabja and its surrounds in 1988.

The US doesn't have clean hands here.  After 1986 it helped
Iraq's gas programme using indirect means, such as improving
delivery and targetting mechanisms.  The US's muted and
deliberately confusing response in 1988 (eg, attempting
to implicate Iran) was interpreted by both sides as strong
ongoing support for Saddam's regime.  And, of course, the
US poured large sums of money into the Iraqi military.

At the time the US supported Iraq as a counter to the expansion
of Iranian influence (which was predominantly anti-US after
relations broke down in the early days of the Iranian Revolution).

This support was vital in establishing a mindset in Baghdad
that the invasion of Kuwait would be acceptable to the US.
Worse the US State Department was so used to mollifying Iraq
that it missed Saddam's subtle inquiries about any likely US
response.

It seems that after the Gulf War Iraq's toxic weapons programme
was dismantled.  Probably originally with an aim to staying
out of view until Butler's team was withdrawn and good US-Iraq
relations were restored.  Of course, relations never improved:
partly because the US holds long grudges against former foes
and partly because Iran's politics were slowly moving away from a
theocracy and towards an accomodation with the West.  At
some stage it appears that decisions were made that the weapons
were too dangerous to hold -- because of deterioration and
because of fear of a massively non-proportional US response.

Which is ironic, because if you believe the official US war
aims for the Invasion of Iraq then a non-proportional response
to rumours of toxic gas weapons is exactly what happened.

Regards,
Glen

 [ Showing what a complete waste of time reading the newspaper
   every day since age 15 has been.  So much effort just for
   a pedantic response to a throw-away line to an off-topic
   message on a mailing list about a cult operating system :-)
 ]

-- 
Glen Turner         Tel: (08) 8303 3936 or +61 8 8303 3936 
Network Engineer          Email: glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au
Australian Academic & Research Network   www.aarnet.edu.au


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