Evidence that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade"?

[qsaark]

@Gambit

Rants ignored.

 

[SekrutYakhni]

@ Gambit!

Can you tells us what really happened during Vietnam and Iraq?
There is a difference between American version of the story with other versions.

Take the example of Cold War.
You had a different version than Russians. Both said they were right...but it does not mean you are right..or they were right...
Some people like me are here to know about the history..we don't take sides...we are just neutral...

You should present a story in more neutral and thought provoking way..
Insult or loosing/winning a debate is not the reason we join forums. We tell our prospectives when we write here and the posts pretty much tells about our calibre.

We support our country's policies no matter what the consequences are of those policies....like a blind bull...
We "have" to be neutral to know the actual history..

History is a black hole where you can't see/judge anything...you meet people with "their" versions but in order to know everything we have to go to the other end of the black hole...
History is never very straight.

 

[qsaark]

Saad, open up a new thread with the title "Vietnam ki kahani, ek ghaddar ki zubani".

 

[SekrutYakhni]

Saad, open up a new thread with the title "Vietnam ki kahani, ek ghaddar ki zubani".

I did sir!

This is the link:
http://www.defence.pk/forums/u-s-fo...ghaddar-ki-zubani-vietnam-war.html#post639879

 

[gambit]

@Gambit

Rants ignored.

Indeed we should ignore your rants about Iraq. We have ZILCH in terms of credible evidence that Saddam Hussein was 'groomed' by US to become Iraq's ruler.

So for the readers' benefits...

Before Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq, the closest link to the oh-so-omninous CIA would be when young Saddam was a member of Iraqi Ba'athist exiles in Egypt. Any country that harbors political exiles always exercise strict controls over them lest their political activism damage the host country's foreign relations with their home country under that current leadership. The US would have been interested in this group of young Iraqi rebels as they could be useful in the fight against communism. We would have kept watch on them as a group, as potential political allies, not that the US actually singled out Saddam Hussein and 'groomed' him from his time in Egypt.

After he came to power, Saddam fictionalized his biography in The Long Days. Can you point out to the readers where is the link to the CIA in this story? I would think that given Saddam's penchant for exaggeration, the CIA would be a prominent role as supplicant to that young Saddam, from seeking him out to arming him to assist him in Qasim's assassination attempt...

Ayyam al-tawila, al- - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ayyam al-tawila, al- (English: The Long Days) is a 6-hour long biographical account of Saddam Hussein's attempted assassination of Abd al-Karim Qasim, although some sources also list a running time of 150 minutes. It was filmed in 1980 and edited by Terence Young, who also directed three James Bond films. Video footage in the West has been limited to brief clips on news reports and documentaries.

The film starred Hussein's cousin Saddam Kamal as Saddam and was directed by Tewfik Saleh.

At the most, in the Ba'athists-CIA alliance, Saddam's reputation as a violent thug would have attracted the CIA's attention as someone whose personal association should be AVOIDED, not cultivated. You are telling the readers that out of these young Iraqis exiles led by older mentors and experienced political activists, Saddam Hussein stood out as the most ideologically and philosophically astute of the bunch. In your world, anyone so much as glanced in the direction of trenchcoated man wearing dark sunglasses is a 'CIA agent'. Give us all a break.

 

[qsaark]

Exclusive: Saddam Was key in early CIA plot

04/11/03
UPI: Richard Sale

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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."

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's 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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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."

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."

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Source: Exclusive: Saddam Was key in early CIA plot

 

[qsaark]

The CIA's Assets in the Middle East

by Gary North

President Bush in his speech on St. Patrick’s Day issued a challenge to Saddam Hussein: "Get out within 48 hours, and take your sons with you."

I hope Hussein takes this warning seriously. If he leaves, his country will be spared a lot of bloodshed, at least until the Shi’ites take over. But he probably won’t leave.

In a superb two-hour documentary, "The Long Road to War," which was aired on PBS's "Frontline" on the evening of March 17, the same evening as Bush's speech, it becomes clear that Saddam Hussein almost cracked under pressure, twice: when the Shi’ites of Iran almost won the war with Iraq, and again on the last day of the Gulf War, when Colin Powell persuaded President Bush to call off the march into Baghdad. Anyway, this was the opinion of one former Iraqi intelligence officer, who was with Hussein at the time. In both cases, Hussein rebounded and became more arrogant.

It also is clear that Hussein is no Hitler. He is a Stalin. He literally modeled himself after Stalin.

He was our man in Baghdad from day one. He was a CIA asset.

Saddam Hussein came under CIA influence after he had attempted to assassinate Iraq’s leftist military leader, Kassem, in 1958, the same year that Kassem ousted the ruling monarch. Kassem used Nasser as his model. Hussein put together a hit team to take out Kassem. Their attempt failed. Hussein was slightly wounded. He escaped, fled to Cairo, and began a series of contacts with the CIA in Cairo. The CIA was opposed to Kassem, who they regarded as too much like Nasser and too close to Moscow.

Although the documentary did not cover the following, it is worth noting that in 1953, the CIA and the British M16 had engineered a coup against the leftist who ran Iran, Mossadegh. The New York Times (April 16, 2000) ran several primary source documents written immediately after the coup by the CIA. They are on-line.

Mossadegh had threatened to nationalize the oil, owned mainly by the British. The British then stopped pumping oil in Iran, pushing the country into economic crisis. The coup followed.

The CIA installed the Pahlevi family on the throne of Iran, the Peacock Monarchy. It would be a modernizing force for Iran, the CIA believed: secular, not an arm of Iran’s dominant Shi’ite sect. And so the monarchy became. It maintained control over the Shi’ite majority by creating the infamous Savak: the secret police. In 1979, that plan backfired when radical Shi’ites overthrew the Shah. The Ayatollah Khomeini took over. The Shi’ites – far more aggressive than the Sunni sect – remain in power today.

In 1963, the Ba’ath Party engineered a coup against Kassem. They had CIA approval. They assassinated him. Hussein returned to Baghdad. Almost immediately, the new regime was recognized by the United States government. But the Ba’athists were tossed out almost immediately by a revolt of army officers. With CIA assistance, the Ba’ath Party regained power in 1968. Much of this background information is covered in a March 14 New York Times article by Roger Morris.

In 1979, the same year that the Shah was removed from power in a Shi’ite revolt in Iran, Saddam Hussein engineered a coup inside the Ba’ath Party and killed his opponents, Stalin-like. He has been in power ever since.

A SHI’ITE MAJORITY

The United States in the 1980’s funded Iraq. The Shi’ites were seen by Reagan’s Administration as the more dangerous religious force in the region. So, we backed the secular Ba’athists, who were socialists to the core.

The Sunnis constitute only 30% of the population in Iraq. The majority is Shi’ite. The Ba’athists are more closely associated with the Sunnis. So, the Shi’ites in Iran are hoping for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

As "The Long Road to War" makes clear, the United States called on the Kurds (north) and the Shi’ites (south) to revolt against Hussein in 1991. They did, and then we did not intervene to support them after the cease fire. The documentary ran video clips taken by Ba’athists in the south, kicking and beating captured Shi’ites, whose resistance movement lasted only two weeks after their post-war revolt began. In the north, we did finally intervene defensively after the Kurds had fled their cities.

In both Iran and Iraq, the CIA’s assets used the power of the secret police to crush the Shi’ite opposition. Khomeini removed the former asset; President Bush will soon remove the latter. But this leaves the Shi’ites in the majority in both countries.

After the documentary, the local PBS station ran Bill Moyers’ weekly "NOW" show. He interviewed one of the expatriate Iraqi advisors to President Bush, Kanen Makiya. He has been in the United States for 35 years. He teaches at Brandeis University, the liberal, secular Jewish university. This is the man Mr. Bush has selected to run the committee that will produce the post-Saddam Iraqi constitution. He told Moyers that he is confident that democracy will work just fine in Iraq – as confident as Richard Perle is. The two of them delivered a joint lecture on March 17.

My suggestion: when putting together a committee of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi’ites, it’s probably not a good strategy to put a Brandeis professor in charge. I would call this arrangement "insensitive," except that liberals have co-opted this word.

Moyers also interviewed the historian Simon Schama. Schama thinks that the invasion of Iraq will be the Rubicon crossing for the United States, i.e., a major turning point in the history of the Middle East and the United States. He is not confident that we will be successful in putting the pieces back together. Far more optimistic was Walter Isaacson, now the head of the Aspen Institute, formerly a senior editor at Time and the co-author of The Wise Men, a book on the six men who shaped American foreign policy, 1935–80. He thinks that we may actually be able to depart in two years. Isaacson was also interviewed by Moyers.

As an historian, I’m with Schama on this issue. We are about to open Pandora’s box, where only hope was positive. The United States must protect the rebuilt oil fields. A bigger task will be to keep the Kurds out of the clutches of the Turks, and the Sunnis out of the clutches of the Shi’ites.

Twenty years ago, the Reagan Administration was determined to keep the Iranian revolution bottled up. This was why our government sent money and weapons to Iraq. Now Reagan’s hawks – Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle – insist that a Saddam-free Iraq can move into democracy, despite the 1991 slaughter of the Kurds and the Shi’ites by the Sunnis under the Ba’ath flag. More than this: they actually believe that Iraq will become a model of democracy for Arab states in the region.

I’m sure that our allies, the Saud family, get all tingly just thinking about how much democracy will do for them and their continuing control over Saudi Arabia. As Sunnis, they must relish the thought of democracy in Iraq, where their ancient rivals, the Shi’ites, will become the dominant political force as soon as American troops leave.

SHI’ITES AREN’T LIKE METHODISTS

Similarly, Sunnis aren’t like Presbyterians. Iraq is not the United States. These Islamic sects take their religion very seriously. They are not like America’s denominations, content to recruit from each other’s members unofficially, and not much more. If you want a comparison for Iraq, think of the Thirty Years War (1618–48), which tore up Germany for a generation.

For almost a quarter century, Saddam Hussein has ruled with an iron fist. Prof. Makiya said that the Ba’ath Party has murdered well over a million people – something in the range of 8% of the population. I don’t doubt it. When a man models himself on Stalin, he is not going to be squeamish about a million counter-revolutionaries.

So, without any democratic tradition, Iraq is about to be pushed into democracy by occupying troops, whose main task will be the defense of the oil wells. The United States will hand out billions of dollars for rebuilding what our military forces will soon blow up. It would not surprise me if Haliburton Co., Mr. Cheney’s former employer (CEO), might even get a few construction contracts. Why not? It has experience. While Mr. Cheney was running Haliburton, the company signed two contracts with Iraq through two of its subsidiaries. The contracts were worth $73 million.

The hostility between these groups runs deep. It will take more than the skills of a Brandeis professor to create a working constitutional settlement and establish peace. It will take full-time American troops. The problem we will soon face is how to keep a well-armed citizenry from killing each other and assassinating our troops from time to time.

Meanwhile, the Shi’ites across the border in Iran will do what they can to see that their spiritual brethren are not denied their "democratic rights" as the dominant majority in Iraq. For this cause, they lost about 400,000 troops in the 1980’s. Now their rival, Saddam Hussein, no longer has U.S. money to back him in his war against Iran.

The problem, of course, will be the presence of full-time American troops in Iraq. The Great Satan will be within a couple of minutes’ flight from Iran. To keep the lid on in Iraq, the United States must station troops.

There is a slogan attributed to Islam: "My brother and I against our cousin. We and our cousin against the world." I am beginning to hear assorted pundits in Washington discuss the recruiting potential for al-Qaeda, now that American troops are stationed in the region. In a report to my subscribers on October 11, 2001, I wrote this:

All over the Middle East, bin Laden is getting a hearing. His accusations now focus on Islamic concerns generally, not just the issue that first motivated him: the presence of infidels (Americans) on Saudi Arabian soil. He now talks of U.S. support of the State of Israel, the U.S. sanctions against Iraq, which still include almost daily bombing, and the looming attack on an Islamic nation, Afghanistan.

It should be clear what he is doing. It is what I have said from the beginning that the attack was all about: recruiting for the jihad.

How serious is this jihad for Americans? Until September 11, it was only marginal. Now, it is on the minds of tens of millions of potential recruits. The U.S. media will not discuss this. They do not want to face facts. This is why we saw so little of the street demonstrations on TV. They were spontaneous, unlike most street demonstrations. What we saw was a spontaneous, deeply felt hatred of America all over the Islamic world – not just the Middle East.

The reality of this process is becoming visible, even to the talking heads in Washington. For a decade, Osama bin Laden has preached the removal of American troops from Saudi soil. He has argued that we plan to control the region. Now we are proving his point.

In February, a British-based Islamic news agency claimed to have an audiotape by bin Laden that predicted his martyrdom this year. This was the day after al-Jazeera broadcast another tape by bin Laden calling for martyrdom in the war against the United States and Israel.

There have been a few reports of volunteers coming into Iraq from other Arab nations to join the Iraqis in what are essentially suicide operations. I have seen one video clip of a group of these volunteers. Their presence, followed by their certain deaths, will serve as fuses that are laid all over the region. The solidarity of Arabs is rare. It takes a common enemy. We are now the target, even more than the British after 1918. The British knew how to run their empire from the shadows. We will be on satellite TV.

American forces or our allies (for this year) may kill bin Laden later this year. This will not do us much good. We are about to enter the tar baby of the Middle East. We have become the common enemy. Europe, apart from Britain, will be able to say, "It’s not our fault. Our hands are clean. Blame Bush." If the cost of the war escalates, we can be sure that the Democrats in Congress will say the same thing.

THE STRATEGIST

If Saddam has any sense of military strategy, he has dispersed his forces into squads. These squads are assigned to homes in Sunni-dominated areas. This will force our troops to attack villages and towns. It is unlikely that we would level each town from the air. House-to-house combat will raise the cost of the war: more casualties for our troops, and more civilian casualties, which is bad for public relations.

There is no way that Iraqi tanks, planes, or anything larger than a mortar will survive our initial onslaught. If he masses his troops, they will be taken out early. There will be tens of thousands of grieving families who blame America for their post-war desolation.

But if he has dispersed them, we will have a tactical problem. House-to-house combat in Sunni areas will tend to create a bond between the Sunnis and Ba’ath forces. The Sunnis know what will happen if Shi’ites get into power. This is why they will be willing to defend their homes from our troops. For his troops to attempt to occupy Shi’ite areas now would be foolhardy.

Americans are being told nothing about how the Iraqi military forces are being deployed. Our military forces must know from satellite surveillance. I have no inside information. If Hussein learned anything from the road of death – the retreat from Kuwait – in 1991, he will not concentrate his forces where planes can bomb them. He will place them in close contact with civilians, not just in Baghdad, but in the whole region.

If Hussein keeps large numbers of troops massed together, then his generals can surrender more easily. I saw a press conference at which Donald Rumsfeld claimed that there have already been preliminary negotiations between American generals and Iraqi generals. But if Iraqi troops are dispersed, then no surrender at the top will be enforceable on the troops. They will be dug in.

The initial phase of the attack has a name: shock and awe. (The post-war phase, as described by the Administration so far, can accurately be named shuck and jive.) Shock and awe worked in Afghanistan. But in Iraq, the Sunnis know that they will be the big losers in any post-Saddam regime. They probably know that those Iraqis who survive the war will be well-treated by American troops. But we are not their main problem. Shi’ites are their main problem. If we leave, the reprisals will begin. We allowed Saddam exact his reprisals against the Shi’ites in 1991. If we decide to leave or withdraw to the oil fields, there will be executions on a scale never dreamed of by the Hatfields and the McCoys. I don’t think a professor from Brandeis can do much to stop this process.

CONCLUSION

This war is not going to be a cakewalk. I pray that Saddam Hussein will get out while the getting is good, but I think he has decided to take his chances. He will not win this war.

The question is: Will we?

Source:The CIA's Assets in the Middle East by Gary North

 

[qsaark]

Rumsfeld backed Saddam even after chemical attacks

by Andrew Buncombe,
The Independent [London, UK]

Dec. 24, 2003

Fresh controversy about Donald Rumsfeld's personal dealings with Saddam Hussein was provoked yesterday by new documents that reveal he went to Iraq to show America's support for the regime despite its use of chemical weapons.

The formerly secret documents reveal the Defence Secretary travelled to Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America's condemnation of its use of chemical weapons was made "strictly" in principle.

The criticism in no way changed Washington's wish to support Iraq in its war against Iran and "to improve bi-lateral relations ... at a pace of Iraq's choosing".

Earlier this year, Mr Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration regularly cited Saddam's willingness to use chemical weapons against his own people as evidence of the threat presented to the rest of the world.

Senior officials presented the attacks against the Kurds — particularly the notorious attack in Halabja in 1988 — as a justification for the invasion and the ousting of Saddam.

But the newly declassified documents reveal that 20 years ago America's position was different and that the administration of President Ronald Reagan was concerned about maintaining good relations with Iraq despite evidence of Saddam's "almost daily" use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels.

In March 1984, under international pressure, America condemned Iraq's use of such chemical weapons. But realising that Baghdad had been upset, Secretary of State George Schultz asked Mr Rumsfeld to travel to Iraq as a special envoy to meet Saddam's Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, and smooth matters over.

In a briefing memo to Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Shultz wrote that he had met Iraqi officials in Washington to stress that America's interests remained "in (1) preventing an Iranian victory and (2) continuing to improve bilateral relations with Iraq".

The memo adds: "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

Exactly what Mr Rumsfeld, who at the time did not hold government office, told Mr Aziz on 26 March 1984, remains unclear and minutes from the meeting remain classified. No one from Mr Rumsfeld's office was available to comment yesterday.

It was not Mr Rumsfeld's first visit to Iraq. Four months earlier, in December 1983, he had visited Saddam and was photographed shaking hands with the dictator. When news of this visit was revealed last year, Mr Rumsfeld claimed he had "cautioned" Saddam to stop using chemical weapons.

When documents about the meeting disclosed he had said no such thing, a spokesman for Mr Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue with Mr Aziz.

America's relationship with Iraq at a time when Saddam was using chemical weapons is well-documented but rarely reported.

During the war with Iran, America provided combat assistance to Iraq that included intelligence on Iranian deployments and bomb-damage assessments. In 1987-88 American warships destroyed Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf and broke the blockade of Iraqi shipping lanes.

Tom Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, a non-profit group that obtained the documents, told The New York Times: "Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980s and it didn't make any difference to US policy. The embrace of Saddam and what it emboldened him to do should caution us as Americans that we have to look closely at all our murky alliances."

Last night, Danny Muller, a spokesman for the anti-war group Voices in the Wilderness, said the documents revealed America's "blatant hypocrisy". He added: "This is not an isolated event. Continuing administrations have said 'we will do business'. I am surprised that Donald Rumsfeld does not resign right now."

 

[gambit]

Exclusive: Saddam Was key in early CIA plot

04/11/03
UPI: Richard Sale

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.

<snipped>

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.

The misleading word here is 'authorized'. The assassination attempt was actually initiated by Fuad Rikabi with full support and finally authorization by the UAR (Nasser). Adel Karim Shaikhally, Saddam's friend, received training in Damascus by Nasser's police. So where is this CIA authorization?

 

[Awesome]

Emotional arguments aside do you honestly believe the people of Kashmir will be better off with Pakistan? Or survive as an independent nation? Reality check, Asim the EU, US and several of your own brotherly nations are not convinced.

You want Kashmir then prove to the international community that Pakistan is capable of providing good governance - it is that simple. As things stand today, India has made Kashmir militarily and politically untenable. On present course, Kashmir is going once…going twice…

They won't be massacred, thats one good thing.

Other than that, I think Kashmir has ENOUGH revenue generation of its own to survive and thrive. The region is more beautiful than Switzerland. Other than Tourism, it has some potential for natural dams. As an independent country without beefs against Pakistan or India both nations would trust it to not block our water giving Kashmir humongous surplus in power generation capability.

The region is huge, filled with resources and has a very small population.

Pakistan doesn't mind Kashmir going independent if thats what Kashmiris want. We are more than willingly to incorporate Kashmiris as a part of Pakistan if that is what they choose.

Politically Kashmiris would have a lot of power in Pakistan as it is they form one of the more richer upper class of the Pakistani society (mostly found in Punjab). Nawaz Sharif a person of Kashmiri ethnicity won prime ministership twice and speculators believe he is more popular than Zardari. Some would say Kashmiris are to Pakistan like what Jewish Industrialists are to America (with only positive rep).

 

[Developereo]

The most powerful lobby in the US is AIPAC. which fuels much of the war hysteria against Muslim countries. The orthodox Jewish senator Joseph Liebermann never saw a Muslim country he did not want to invade. And some of the most fervent (and influential) warmongers are Evangelical Christians who see an end-of-world "Rapture" scenario in every conflict.

The US war machine is very much guided by religous fanatics of the Jewish and Christian kind.

Most Evangelical Leaders Still Support Iraq War | Christianpost.com

 

[sherdil76]

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

New zealand banned trijicons controversial military hardware i wonder why?OH i know COZ ITS F...G STUPID TO DO SO.

 

[Awesome]

The war against Islam has more to do with Islamophobia than Crusades. Its a mix of a lot of things actually.

1. Islamophobia
2. Unproportional out of context publicization of our theocratic laws and their monstrosity
3. The fact that under democratic norms, Muslims would eventually become the majority power
4. A hint of old Church rivalry with the Muslims
5. Muslims own doctrine to spread the word of Islam clashes with Christianity's own doctrine to spread Christianity
6. Leading point from the above that Christians of America are hardly Christian, most of them just born into Christianity, Muslims majoritatively are practicing Muslims
7. Crazy muslims and Islamophobic westerners have the same concepts about what Islam is, moderate Muslims are ignored in this defining process

Somewhere amongst the decision makers amongst western countries it seems like there is a movement in place where they want to go along the lines that "Its just so much simpler and better for everyone if Muslims are sidelined, subdued or trapped within their own barbarity". Every western move is designed to not help Muslims but in some way or the other make their lives harder.

The way out for Muslims is not to go crazier and accept this western and Al Qaeda's shared definition of Islam but impose our own moderate definition with strength. Take over your own house with strength.

Blaming America is no way forward. As I mentioned there are plenty of reasons why they would be the way they are. Crusades are a tiny part of it perhaps, perhaps! But other more important reasons are still there and will remain so, like what we're doing to ourselves and allowing to picked off one by one.

As many Muslims America's war may be killing I'm pretty sure more Muslims are killing Muslims in the name of Islam . Suicide bombing galore! How's that for irony.

 

[Vassnti]

New zealand banned trijicons controversial military hardware i wonder why?OH i know COZ ITS F...G STUPID TO DO SO.

You have lost me there, why is it stupid to ask for bible verses to be removed from the scopes?
Allowing troops to carry what ever religious items the wish is one thing. Having a religious inscription from one religion on an item you are required to use and maintain is not when the person using the item may not be christian and could cause offence.

As for the religious crusade, if the US was truly embarked on a religious crusade to eliminate Islam, why only two countries that they are planning or in the process of leaving?

There are roughly 150 countries with significant Muslim populations seems like they missed bombing 148 targets.

If they were at war with islam you would think the first step would be kick the 2,500,000 freely practicing muslims out of the US.

There are 1.5 billion muslims world wide roughly , there are 60 million in afghanistan and Iraq, conflicts in two countires with muslim populations does not make it a war against Islam.