Re: oil be lovin you always!
> Well, the WMD's was lead on
> hang on everyone knew saddam had weapons, you lot give them to him ffs!
Where do you think the USA ranks on the list of countries that exported arms to Iraq? The answer might surprise you. Denmark and Brazil rank above us.....
And America gave NO weapons of mass destruction to Saddam. America provided some support in the form of, for example, intelligence, out of fear that Iran would overrun them (America sought a stalemate in the Iran-Iraq war). America also sold a bunch of light helicopters for civilian use, which were switched to military uses by the Iraqi government, and amounted to roughly 1% of the military equipment/arms that Iraq imported. You'll have to look to the USSR/Russia, France, China, and to a lesser extent, Poland and Czechoslovakia, if you want to find the countries that armed Saddam.
Those who say Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam oral after he shook Saddam's hand seem to have over-active imgainations. Those who think Iraq was America's "best friend" when it was obviously communist and socialist countries who were (Iraq was, after all, a socialist/Stalinist state), seem to have been seriously misinformed. America's best friends are countries like Great Britain, Australia, Canada.....
My main reason for posting, however, was to ask you if you caught ABC News' reporting this week on a list of 270 recipients of oil gifts from Saddam in exchange for their support?
George Galloway is on this list.
As are associates of Chirac and a buttload of Russians.
As is the Iraqi-American who contributed $400,000 to Scott Ritter, and arranged and financed the Baghdad Democrats' - Jim McDermott, Mike Thompson and David Bonior - trip to Iraq last autumn.
But yeah, good old George Galloway. The man Grim loved.
Didn't he say the document the Telegraph had acquired was "forged"? LOL!
This list says he recieved a 1 million barrel oil bribe from Saddam.
We have truckloads of documents from Iraq' this is just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure.
The more I learn about the political forces who sought to undermine the liberation of Iraq - from their "sexed up" journalism," to their topping the list of countries that armed Saddam, to their blood-for-oil corruption, to Euopean and Middle Eastern journalists and politicians who recieved huge bribes from Saddam - the more I get sick to my stomach.
And the more I'm proud that - despite the tons of reservatons I have about the Bush presidency (I've always been a Tony Blair man, first and foremost, in all this) - I sided with an Iraq liberation led by a president who stated at the National Endowment for Demcracy: "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accomodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe - because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."
I took this as an apology for America's shameful relations with Saddam going back to John F. Kennedy (who had the CIA support Saddam in exile), and then Jimmy Carter (who allegedly green-lighted the Iran invasion, and began our official relations with Saddam), and Ronald Reagon (who continued to betray America's ideals by continuing this relationship with Saddam).
I wonder why other players in all this, who continued their relations with Saddam even after he invaded and annexed a sovereign state, and sought to keep the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples enslaved for another generation, have no shame.
America wanted sanctions lifted from the IRaqi people and the Baathist boots lifted from their necks. Others, apparently, wanted sanctions lifted from the Iraqi people with Saddam left in power, to use his oil money to continue his torture, mass murder, genocide, terrorist support, and WMD/nuclear programs. hey, who cares, as long as they could make money with corrupt oil contracts with the dictator!
I wonder why American presidents such as Clinton and W. Bush are the ones most strongly condemned when their official policies were in opposition to Saddam and for regime change in Iraq. I wonder why all the people who told us of the world's genocide in Iraq due to all the people dying under sanctions are not happy the sanctions have been lifted. I wonder why the world doesn't come together to help achieve one absolute and objective good: To create a democratic Iraq. Whatever disagreements anyone had over the invasion, how can one not want to help a country rebuild into a decent place. After all, we all have Iraqi and Kurdish blood on our hands. No one is clean. A new, decent Iraq, by and for the Iraqi people, with all groups inside Iraq being protected and represented, is a way for the world to cleanse it's hands. Are you gonna leave it up to Bush to ensure things are done right?
The world owes the country of Iraq BIGTIME. I'm happy a good share of my tax dollars are currently, and for the first time, being put to *positive* use there. Now I wish the world would respond to U.N. Resolution 1511, which refers to the Governing Counsel as embodying the sovereingty of IRaq until it is practicable to transfer to an elected Iraqi government, and help make sure things are done properly there.
And I wonder why so much of the left wing have sold out their ideals, instead of being as wise as this man, Paul Berman:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/wi04/berman.htm
