Weak daddy, weak.
How are you supporting your position? By deflection?
That's sheepishly right out of the Island playbook. You can do better than that, can't you?

Oh goodness, Not exactly an exerpt, lol. Pragraph by paragraph. [sigh] You got to read yer own articles!

U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.
> nothing here, authors opinion

United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report.
> nothing here, wasted space

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
> what does this have to do with installing him as dictator, even IF true NADA

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."
> OK great still NADA

According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.
> neat history, still NADA

Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.
> NADA

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."
>no ****, NADA

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with [the] . . . ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."
>yawn, NADA

According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.
> A lil sumpin, but still has NADA to do with installing him as dictator

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.
> A lil sumpin, but still has NADA to do with installing him as dictator

Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.
> A lil sumpin, but still has NADA to do with installing him as dictator

The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.
>Neat, but still fruitless on the relevancy tree today:)

"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.
>do we ever get a point here? NADA

Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.
>aha, but that only means we USED him for our own purposes. Still no installation NADA

One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."
>gotta be a point in there somewhere, but no.

In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.
> great, NADA

One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive."
> NADA

But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.
> great we knew him

Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at the time.
>NADA

In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly denied this.
>NADA

"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the hell had happened," this official said.
> stunned great, NADA

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.
>executions, neat, NADA

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.
>many suspected something? Oh it has nothing to do with the argument[sigh[]

A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business."
>NADA

A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed."
>I know we dont like communists, NADA

British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."
> Jim sounds like a nice guy, point? NADA

Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party.
>great, NADA

The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group.
> yes we are well aware that we sided with Iraq here, NADA

This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I thought I was losing my mind," the former official told UPI.
>we wanted peace, neat. NADA

A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq's military intelligence, to meet with the Americans.
>yes and, NADA

According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days.
>sided with Iraq, we know.NADA

The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience came to an end at 2 a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become its bitterest enemy.
> Absolute NADA
Wait is that it?/? point?

I read the links posted..mostly op-ed type articles. None claimed we "gave saddam chemical weapons." Most did not make claims we helped him rise to power. A couple cited the usual unnamed souces that the CIA somehow helped him in the late 50's. All the quotes about the '70s and '80s mean nothing...because, of course, saddam was already in power.

Perhaps in all your speed reading you forgot what you were trying to prove?

I particularly like the "fair and independent" quality of the links Staylo posted. This one is particularly laughable. If they really had a single shred of proof regarding something like this, they would have won a pulitzer instead of just being quoted on some low-rent, liberal (I need no proof if it makes the US look bad) site.
LOL

Hello................Maybe he's actually reading them this time? Change is good, you'll be a better man for it:)

You guys just won't believe what's written. From the Washington Post article (I know that is a Conservative favourite):

A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.

and a bit later:

When United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, they compiled long lists of chemicals, missile components, and computers from American suppliers, including such household names as Union Carbide and Honeywell, which were being used for military purposes.

A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee turned up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the mid-'80s under license from the Commerce Department, including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare.

Forgive me for reading this and thinking that US Administrations helped Saddam get WMD.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=3&u=/ap/iraq_attack

"This was a wedding and the (U.S.) planes came and attacked the people at a house. Is this the democracy and freedom that (President) Bush has brought us?" said a man on the videotape, Dahham Harraj. "There was no reason."


Another man shown on the tape, who refused to give his name, said the victims were at a wedding party "and the U.S. military planes came ... and started killing everyone in the house."


your tax dollars at work

None are so blind as those who will not see.

http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=856

Anyone need to demand proof that these were indeed the causalities of air attack and not of terrorist actions? I’m not actually sure how many F/A18s al Qaeda has.

And so goes the War on Terror, rolling on, winning the hearts and minds of the people. If there were truth in advertising in would be actually named the Program for Encouragement and Development of Terrorism and Ensuring that Successive Generations Around the World Hate Us Even More.

What is the moral equivalence of a terrorist/assassin/insurgent/guerrilla/resistance member stepping from a crowd and shooting a uniformed occupying soldier behind the ear, and in an occupying military killing civilians in a wedding party? Why are we more outraged that al Qaeda hacked off a mans head on TV than in the fact that our interrogators beat an Iraqi (and more than one) to death and photographed his body?

Its a funny old world.

stuart

EDIT: Just to save anyone the trouble of making the inevitable correction, it appears there were no f/A18s involved. Looks like it was one of those big ol' AC130 gunships. Y'know the one, loaded with those wizzing Gatling guns that can dismember several thousand sand monkeys per second.

Glad to see General Kimmit denying that it was a wedding party that was shot up, and he declined comment on the dead children.

I sincerely hope he's proven right. Unlike the similar denial (and later retraction) of the Afghan wedding shot up last year.

Sadly, the perception is already set in Arab minds. Pretty motivating stuff, headless children.

Roll out the barrell

Funny indeed. The America I was brought up in wasn't afraid of flying, of civil liberties or of every petty dictator around the world.

The America I was brought up in strove to be the moral leader of the world; not to immediately sink to the level of every scumbag who opposed us.

But hey. Times cahnge.

In your opinion. You demonstrate the failing oft seen on your side of the argument where it is impossible to assess the situation from anything other than your POV.

In the opinion of many- lets say lots of the 95% of the world's population with the great misfortune to have been been elsewhere than the US- an Iraqi fighting in Iraq against an a foreign occupying military power isnt a "terrorist". I wonder, if China was occupying Iraq, would these Iraqi terrorists stil be terrorists.

stuart

My Bad.
 

Uh Boy. Yes it was a liberal piece, and not the one I inteded to post. I offer my apologies, and this one instead. Relevant exerp to follow.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2003/0314history.htm

The point I wanted to convey through the various links provided that run the gammut of liberal to conservative to Govt. Archive is consistent. The US involvement in the circumstances of Saddam's rise to power are well documented.
I suppose that you would also argue that the CIA had no hand in the political architectures of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. ?
You guys haven't forgoten the Cold War already have you?

Exerp:
As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.

Again, my apologies.

staylo: I think they're unlikely to believe anything that's not on bush2004.com

I know. I guess FOX takes all the fun out of readin'n stuff. How quickly we forget the history that got us where we are today.

Ah, but look at the bright side. Who could forget the French being called "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys"?

Now, thats Fair and Balanced.

stuart

"Who could forget the French being called "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys"? "

Perfect example. There's short-term memory at work for ya. (even though I find it kinda funny)

The French were our biggest supporters during the revolutionary war. Plus, I think they gave us a statue out of admiration.

And even now, I find France to be a country where Americans are still considered good and generous. But I suspect most Bush supporters don't even own a passport.

Wow, lazy AND ignorant. Why am I not suprised?

Oh, you old silver tongue 350, you're gonna make me blush.

First of all the Washington Post is not a conservative favorite..most of us regard it as a liberal rag ...much like the LA Times, the New Yorker, New York Times, etc

Secondly, there is a big difference between finding out that some US companies sold items to Iraq that could be regarded as dual purpose and saying that the "US gave Iraq its WMDs." That is akin to saying that since Germany bought steel from us in the '30s, we gave them V2 rockets and caused WW2. At the time, our country...and many others sold these items to almost any nation that wanted them. Note the term "subsequently identified"...hindsight is always 20/20.