In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Articles that will make you sick
or
Leaders without morals
Documents: Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in ’84 Despite Chemical Raids
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 — As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified documents show.
Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time, was tapped by Secretary of State George P. Shultz [board member of Bechtel, see below] to reinforce a message that a recent move to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons was strictly in principle and that America's priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.
During that war, the United States secretly provided Iraq with combat planning assistance, even after Mr. Hussein's use of chemical weapons was widely known. The highly classified program involved more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who shared intelligence on Iranian deployments, bomb-damage assessments and other crucial information with Iraq.
The disclosures round out a picture of American outreach to the Iraqi government, even as the United States professed to be neutral in the eight-year war, and suggests a private nonchalance toward Mr. Hussein's use of chemicals in warfare. Mr. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials have cited Iraq's use of poisonous gas as a main reason for ousting Mr. Hussein. Emphasis Mine.
...
In a follow-up memo, the chief of the American interests section reported that Mr. Aziz had conveyed Mr. Hussein's satisfaction with the meeting. "The Iraqi leadership was extremely pleased with Amb. Rumsfeld's visit," the memo said. "Tariq Aziz had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a person." Emphasis Mine. That must have been high praise indeed - person to person
When news emerged last year of the December trip, Mr. Rumsfeld told CNN that he had "cautioned" Mr. Hussein to forgo chemical weapons. But when presented with declassified notes of their meeting that made no mention of that, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue in a meeting with Mr. Aziz.
Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday that there was no inconsistency between Mr. Rumsfeld's previous comments on his missions to Iraq and the State Department documents.
And 1+1 is 3 you liberal anti-patriotic leftist media jackass! Stop asking questions!
Iraq received a green light to invade Kuwait?
The Arab world's conspiracy theorists argue that when 100,000 troops and 300 tanks were poised at Kuwait's border in late July 1990, about to attack, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, gave Saddam the distinct impression the U.S. didn't care what happened. She had just returned to the U.S. Embassy from a meeting at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry when she got word that she was to come back to the ministry immediately. Without any explanation as to where she was going, she was taken to see Saddam. It was her first meeting with the president.
In a much-reported exchange, Miss Glaspie told Saddam "your inter-Arab disputes do not concern the United States but we strongly believe they should be settled peacefully." Next day, Miss Glaspie left Iraq to pick up her mother in London and begin a long planned home leave.
On July 31, two days before the balloon went up, Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly testified before Congress that the U.S. had no defense treaty with Kuwait or other Persian Gulf countries. On Aug. 1, the Bush 41 administration approved the sale of advanced data-transmission devices to Iraq. And the day after that, Aug. 2, 1990, Saddam gave his generals the green light to invade Kuwait. Throughout the Arab world's 22 countries, present and former policymakers believe this was the direct result of that ill-fated meeting with the U.S. ambassador when she flashed what Saddam interpreted to be either a yellow or green light.
Ask Arab interlocutors, again off the record, why the U.S. would have wanted Saddam to take over Kuwait? The answers are usually variations on the same theme: As a pretext to bring America's full military power into the Gulf to establish a protectorate over its vast oil resources. So the Bush family and their ilk tried again?
...
In April 1990, when Saddam's resort to chemical warfare against Iraqi Kurds was already well known, a delegation of five Farm Belt senators led by Bob Dole of Kansas, then the Republican leader in the Senate, met with Saddam in Mosul. The senators' main concern was to keep open the Iraqi market for American growers of rice and other grains. Mr. Dole told Saddam President Bush had asked him to say that "he wants better relations, and the U.S. government wants better relations with Iraq." Sen. Alan Simpson, Wyoming Republican, explained to Saddam that Iraq's problem was with the "haughty and pampered" Western media, not with the U.S. government.
That very same day, back in Washington, Mr. Baker instructed Ambassador Glaspie to inform Saddam that "as concerned as we are about Iraq's chemical, nuclear and missile programs, we are not in any sense preparing the way for a pre-emptive military unilateral effort to eliminate these programs. She was also to remind Saddam that when Israel, in 1981, bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant, "we condemned the 1981 raid. And would do so again today. We are telling Israel so."
Ah yes, Jim Baker friend to terrorists, tyrants, and Bush. How proud we must all be of our administration. It should be obvious that Bush, Baker, Rumsfeld, etc. really only love America because that is where they happen to live where they made money. It is the love of money that feeds their patriotic fervor, not the love of freedom and democracy, our grand experiment of rule by the people. It is obvious that their friends like Halliburton and Bechtel have no alligence to this nation, they are truly just in it for the money:
US Firm Bechtel Planned to Evade 1988 Iraq Sanctions
WASHINGTON - U.S. construction giant Bechtel, a firm with a major contract to help rebuild Iraq, planned to hire ”non-U.S. suppliers of technology” so it could evade economic sanctions imposed by Washington after Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iraq's Kurdish minority, according to a newly declassified document.
In April 2003 Bechtel was awarded one of the largest contracts to date by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for infrastructure repair work in U.S.-occupied Iraq. The deal is worth an initial payment of 34.6 million dollars and up to 680 million dollars in total.
Bechtel maintains that it has always respected and complied with U.S. government prohibitions in Iraq, but the uncovered document shows how its officials were prepared to challenge even its Washington allies to retain its business.
According to a 1988 confidential State Department cable, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the non-profit National Security Archive (NSA), U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie wrote that Bechtel officials threatened to bypass the sanctions, passed by the Senate in 1988.
”Bechtel representatives said that if economic sanctions contained in the Senate act are signed into law, Bechtel will turn to non-U.S. suppliers of technology and continue to do business in Iraq,” the cable said.
The document also shows further behind-the-scenes particulars of how the U.S. corporation, now part of President George W. Bush's project to bring democracy to post-Saddam Iraq, courted the dictatorial regime with full knowledge of Saddam's use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and the Kurds -- with the approval of U.S. diplomats.
People ask why I am angered by the Bush administration. Read the above. If you aren't angry that the Bush administration is more interested in business relationships then the lives of Kurds, Iraqis, and Americans, then go ahead, vote for him. You deserve him.
- rob 12:09 PM - [PermaLink] -
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