AlGore is such a dick.

Al Gore accused George H.W. Bush of ignoring and then hiding from the American people Saddam's efforts to build nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and Saddam's ties to terrorists.

That's because George H.W. Bush ***did*** all these things - when Saddam Hussein was our ally. Gore is in fact referring to what George H.W. Bush did to ***support*** Saddam Hussein.

You know, that history that many conservatives would still rather forget.

For this very reason, all of you should really listen to Al Gore's statements. It as absolutely accurate about George H.W. Bush's efforts in bringing Saddam to power in the first place.

You'll note that what Gore did not say was, "George H. W. Bush should invade Iraq right now, and occupy it, and depose Saddam!" That's because Gore knew then, as did George H.W. Bush himself, that this would be a terrible idea.

So, in essence, none of Gore's statements in the above clip, contradict the other facts: after Saddam disarmed and had full inspections ***ten years*** later, in 2002-2003, George W. Bush still invaded.

If you disagree with me, please find one statement of Gore's here that proves me wrong.

Gore's statement below remains true:
"He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place!"

The only possible way to take this statement of Gore's as contradicting his later stance, is to ignore all the details of what Gore said ***both times***, into "Bush was bad for supporting Saddam! But then he said Bush Jr. was bad for invading Iraq!"

Please look a little deeper.

Jim,

Doesn't that also mean that we should look farther beyond just the Bushes and Reagan to tell the story of what's going on in the middle east? Either side can frame whatever sized slice of the story they choose to look good, but the US, like Europe before it, took a not-so-good path in the Mideast. At least Bush Jr. changed the 'good at the time' way we dealt with the Mideast, which is a good contributor to the screwed-upness of a lot of it right now.

Al Gore is a duplicitous jerk, and that's a courteous assessment. Which is precisely why he couldn't carry his home state.

Well Al

Live by the internet...

Die by the internet.

Bet you're now kicking yourself over 'inventing' it.

Hey Jim,

If you cannot see a contradiction in what skinny Al Gore said to what fat Al Gore now says, you are on some serious drugs or Gore's useful idiot. Skinny Gore was trying to be tough Gore. Back then, I took him seriously and he did make some sense. Bush Senior made the mistake of not eliminating Hussein. Gore's point was Hussein was a dangerous tyrant. After the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, dangerous tyrants who ignored the UN, tried to assasinate a president, had a weapons program on hold until sanctions were lifted (according to David Kay and his successor) and was making friends with Al Qaeda had to be taken out. To allow him to continue to rule with all that behind him and the fact that the US was struck on 9/11 would have been irresponsible. It was Gore's administration that signed the Iraq Liberation Act. So how does one liberate Iraq Mr. Gore?

Jim, if the US was the ally of Iraq. Please explain why they used Soviet equipment. They never had M anything tanks, M anything rifles or F anything fighters. They had T62 tanks, AK47 rifles and Migs. Jim, you are just a fu*king liar. What does a piece of shit like you know about anything? Nothing. Your unmarried parents should spank you.

Doesn't it make life simpler when you can hot-button your response to a hard negative?

"Bush 1 didn't do enough to take out Saddam Hussein in GW1" - when it's expedient to claim that.

Bush 2 did too much - when it's expedient to claim THAT!

Could it be that the REALITY - (I know, it's a wierd-ass concept that may or may not conform to your view of how the world should be, especially if you've got your political leanings cast in concrete) - is somewhere in between?

As far as the US providing stuff to Iraq - remember that for much of the Iraq-Iran war, we DID provide Saddam with intelligence. But you'll note, from the graph at http://www.solport.com/roundtable/archives/000082.php - that Russia, China and France provided most of the stuff Saddam needed, with 0.5% coming from the US.

Also, please remember we were (kind of) supporting Saddam against Iran - who under the Carter administration stormed our embassy and took the diplomatic legation hostage. That should have been the spark of a war - but wasn't, and should have been resolved quickly - but wasn't. I think we're paying the price now, for indecision and hesitation back then.

...and the chemical weapons thing is just a damned lie, too. All of Saddam's chemical weapons were made using technology from pretty much everywhere EXCEPT the US. Germany, England, France, the USSR.. the list goes on and on.

The only things the US sold Iraq during the year or so we tried to get on Saddam's good side were a handful of unarmed CIVILIAN helicopters (which ended up as flying limos for Generals and such - Iraq had plenty of actual Soviet-made armed combat choppers, some of which were pre-fitted with chem-war dispensers) and some actual, real insecticides (since the Iraqi chemical industry didn't ever get around to making honest modern insecticides, and they were looking at massive crop failure in some sectors without them). Our total "arms" sales (the helicopters) represented a massive ONE PERCENT of world arms sales to Iraq in ONE year - something like one-seventieth of what the USSR sold them that year.

Not long after we tried the "deal with the dictator" strategy (the same sort or deal most leftists are babbling about trying now with Iran), Saddam started murdering Kurds and other tribes with his good old homemade (with the help of Europe and the USSR) chemical weapons, which is a big part of the reason we stopped even talking to Iraq for a while.

Of course, Powerline had this story three years ago: (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/006996.php)

True then, still true now.

I like it Lee, but he's a dick with a big D....as in Dick

When will someone in Algor-abge's family have him comitted? Any shrink that wouldn't comitt him should have his license to 'practice' removed permanently. Listening to him, Wesley Clark and the democrat leadership of congress is like visiting the local nut house except the residents of the nut house sometimes make sense. They have an occasional flash of reality, not so with half the democrat party.

Doesn't that also mean that we should look farther beyond just the Bushes and Reagan to tell the story of what's going on in the middle east? Either side can frame whatever sized slice of the story they choose to look good, but the US, like Europe before it, took a not-so-good path in the Mideast.

Sure, I totally agree with that. The current sorry state of the Middle East goes back to when the British were the major power there, even; and it's a tragic history of painful lessons that have been repeated without being learned, because they've been forgotten as quickly as possible.

At least Bush Jr. changed the 'good at the time' way we dealt with the Mideast, which is a good contributor to the screwed-upness of a lot of it right now.

I see Bush as not really changing the pattern at all, really; but I would definitely be willing to see a good analysis of the whole picture and with him in it as perspective.

Jim, if the US was the ally of Iraq. Please explain why they used Soviet equipment.

I'll tell you what, Zeldorff - just go and read this article and get up to speed on history.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29?language=printer

Now Zeldorff, if the US was not the ally of Iraq, then why did Rumsfeld shake hands with him when he was Reagan's envoy?

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm

The rest of your refutation is a masterpiece of logic and wisdom. But you shouldn't talk about yourself like that.

Cirby, you also are out of step with the facts.

The US sold Saddam a ***lot*** of weapons and dual-use technology. Other nations sold even more - but we also allowed the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War

"The U.S. sold Iraq $200 million in helicopters, which were used by the Iraqi military in the war...

Ted Koppel of ABC Nightline reported the following, however, on June 9, 1992: "It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush Sr., operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into [an aggressive power]" and "Reagan/Bush administrations permitted -- and frequently encouraged -- the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq."

According to New Yorker, the Reagan Administration began to allow Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt to transfer to Iraq American howitzers, helicopters, bombs and other weapons. [35] Reagan personally asked Italy's Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to channel arms to Iraq.[36]

The United States, United Kingdom, and Germany also provided "dual use" technology (computers, engines, etc.) that allowed Iraq to expand its missile program and radar defenses. The U.S. Commerce Department, in violation of procedure, gave out licenses to companies for $1.5 billion in dual-use items to be sent to Iraq.The State Department was not informed of this. Over 1 billion of these authorized items were trucks that were never delivered. The rest consisted of advanced technology. Iraq's Soviet-made Scuds had their ranges expanded as a result.[37]"

More info also here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,866942,00.html

"The US provided less conventional military equipment than British or German companies but it did allow the export of biological agents, including anthrax; vital ingredients for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front organisation in Chile, the report says....

"Howard Teicher, an Iraq specialist in the Reagan White House, testified in a 1995 affidavit that the then CIA director, William Casey, used a Chilean firm, Cardoen, to send cluster bombs to use against Iran's "human wave" attacks.

"A 1994 congressional inquiry also found that dozens of biological agents, including various strains of anthrax, had been shipped to Iraq by US companies, under licence from the commerce department. "

That's the facts, jack.

Could it be that the REALITY - (I know, it's a wierd-ass concept that may or may not conform to your view of how the world should be, especially if you've got your political leanings cast in concrete) - is somewhere in between?

Sure. It could be that BOTH Presidents did stupid and terrible things. One in helping Saddam too much, one in invading Iraq despite all evidence that with less than 400,000 troops it would be a disaster.

It could also be, Jim, that without the benefit of 20-20 foresight (kind of like 20-20 hindsight, without having to wait) they all just muddle through as best they can.

By the way - "Now Zeldorff, if the US was not the ally of Iraq, then why did Rumsfeld shake hands with him when he was Reagan's envoy?" - um, perhaps because he was an envoy, who was supposed to make nice to the people he met? Especially heads of state?

The American Experience | Nixon's China Game | The Nixon Visit

Nixon deplaned in Beijing on February 21, his flair for both diplomacy and drama well in evidence. Notes Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose, "He knew that when his old friend John Foster Dulles had refused to shake the hand of Chou En-lai in Geneva in 1954, Chou had felt insulted. He knew too that American television cameras would be at the Peking airport to film his arrival. A dozen times on the way to Peking, Nixon told Kissinger and Secretary of State William Rogers that they were to stay on the plane until he had descended the gangway and shaken Chou En-lai's hand. As added insurance, a Secret Service agent blocked the aisle of Air Force One to make sure the president emerged alone."You'd find it hard to argue that the US and China were allies in '72.

Aw, cripes. I hate it when a blockquote breaks like that.

Anyway, the last sentance still stands - we weren't allies of China in 1972, yet Nixon shook hands with Chou En-lai.

Now Zeldorff, if the US was not the ally of Iraq, then why did Rumsfeld shake hands with him when he was Reagan's envoy?

Does that mean the Democrats are an ally of Syria:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/v3/04-05-2007.NI_05pelosi.GS2249SED.1.jpg

I must have missed the "shaking hands alliance" clause. Thanks for informing us.

The rate is still approximately 3,000 enfranchised, and presumably less radical, Iraqi voters for every American dead soldier. A high, but fair, price.

Everytime Al Gore opens his mouth, somewhere something sentient freezes. Bad karma, me boy.
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It's okay. Gore purchases falsehood offsets.

He's got a big thick stack of them in his freezer at home.
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Everytime Al Gore opens his mouth, somewhere something sentient freezes.

Hmm, that must explain your recent posts.

This is hardly surprising. Everybody knew Hussein was a bad guy. The Big Question was what to do about him. Continue the policy of containment or overthrow. You try to pin him as a hypocrite, but I didn't see him criticizing Bush Sr. for not pushing through to Baghdad.

hermie,
Do you realize you are spreading a lie that Al Gore said he invented the internet?

jim:
"The U.S. sold Iraq $200 million in helicopters, which were used by the Iraqi military in the war...

Let me finish out the quote you so cheesily edited:

"These were the only direct U.S.-Iraqi military sales and were valued to be about 0.6% of Iraq's conventional weapons imports during the war.[34]"

At about $2 million dollars each, that's a bit over 120 Jet Rangers or Hughes 500 copters approved for sale (not all delivered, by the way), non-combat aircraft that were, as I said above, mostly used to shuttle generals around. They could have been modified for attack roles, but never were - the officers liked their "flying staff cars."

One source claimed that the US copters were used to spray gas in some attacks, but the survivors of those attacks identified the Russian built helicopters as being the delivery vehicles (the US copters had pesticide sprayers available, but those will NOT work as CW delivery devices - they deliver the wrong spray pattern for CW - too much and too narrow), and a couple of the US copters were used as observation vehicles. Meanwhile the Iraqis had plenty of actual CW gear supplied by the Soviets from when they bought their actual attack choppers - but most of their CW attacks seem to have been artillery-based.

And as I also said, they had actual, armed, Soviet-made choppers (and fighters and such) to fly actual, real combat missions in. You know, out of that NINETEEN BILLION in Soviet weapons they bought during that war (versus, yes, $200 million bought from us in non-combat copters).

Almost everything they count as "dual-use" in those articles is really NOT "dual use," aside from the copters. Of the billion and a half in "approved" purchases, a billion of that was TRUCKS, which were never delivered (since, as I also mentioned in my first post, Saddam had started his campaign against the Kurds in the north). The "range was increased" bit was, of course, never proved or even partially substantiated.

It's kinda hard to count items that were never delivered because we stopped dealing with Iraq as "sales," by the way...

Of the other "dual use" equipment, the only thing that counted as actual dual use equipment was a handful of computers that nobody could ever trace as being used in their missile program.

The pesticides were actually used for, you know, killing insects, not as poison gas precursors or anything (the chemicals we sent were very much unsuited for this - intentionally).

The "export of biological agents, including anthrax" part is EXTREMELY dishonest, since the samples of anthrax that were sold to Iraq were from the American Type Culture Collection, an organization that was established to help various countries fight diseases (almost a hundred years ago). They're a private, non-profit company, and at the time they supplied those germs to Iraq, there were no restrictions of any sort for those sales, since they were for helping people fight diseases all over the world. They also shipped various other cultures, such as brucellocis and e coli. None of the cultures they shipped were anything like a "weaponized" strain (anthrax is available all over the world, and there are a couple of "reference" strains that people use to see how varied their local strains are - and yes, Iraq - like every country on the planet - has local strains of anthrax).

I wouldn't say that Iraq/Hussein was exactly our ALLY during the 1980's, but I would say that the U.S. was hoping to use Iraq/Hussein for certain ends. We were pretty much hoping that Hussein would take care of Iran for us...but that didn't really work out.

And yes, we aided Hussein. It's not all that complicated.

We knew Saddam was a bastard then, but we hoped he was the lesser evil at the time. Maybe that wasn't a good call; maybe it was.

I tend to think it wasn't, but then, I have wonderful hindsight.

Oddly enough Lockheed Martin has, at their Georgia facility, 8 C-130s that were ordered by Iraq but never delivered. At 1970's prices, that's probably close to $120 mil right there. You can see them with Google Earth at N33 54'01.00" W84 30'59.60" They couldn't be sold due to export restrictions that got imposed, but they couldn't be scrapped since SOMEDAY they might be sold to Iraq. So there they sit.

Sitting in Georgia humidity, likely the engines are solid blobs of corrosion, the fuel tanks full of condensation, the air conditioning system full of snakes... hmmm. Snakes on a plane? Nah. It's been done... It'd probably take more to fix them than it would to buy a new C-130J.

Maybe they'll be sold for static displays someday, at a penny a pound. After everything even remotely usable's been stripped...

That's the thing, though.

For a few years in the 1980s, Iraq was fighting against Iran, a country we were REALLY pissed at, due to the hostage crisis of the Carter years, and the two countries were right in the middle of "the Tanker War," which was screwing up a lot of the world's energy supply.

Hussein, while an asshole, seemed much, MUCH more reasonable to deal with than the crazy mullahs in Iran, so we tried to deal with him a little bit, in order to screw over the Iranians and possibly keep the next oil embargo from hitting.

Unfortunately, right about the time the Iran/Iraq war was winding down a bit, Hussein went out and started slaughtering civilians with poison gas, as well as a lot of other really nasty things, so we cut him off as well.

It was really a case of "the enemy of my enemy isn't exactly my friend, but as long as he keeps kicking that other guy in the nuts and doesn't do anything really stupid, we'll try to be a tiny bit nice to him, and maybe give him pointers on where to kick that other guy (you know, the crazy one who broke into our embassy and held a lot of folks hostage)."

(It also points out how the Democratic "we should talk to them" strategy can be really, really stupid - not only does it legitimize the assholes on the other side, but twenty years later, the Democrats will come forwars and bitch about how you were dealing with someone nasty - when it was partly their idea to begin with.)

ryan a, Khomeini was certainly more geopolitically frightening to us then than Saddam was. Can we have a mulligan on the '80's in the Mideast?

cirby, I happen to believe that most of the casualties at Jalaba were from Iranian nerve gas. And that the civilian casualties were a by-product of the bilateral use of gas in a war for water, the nearby Tigris tributary dam. Do you know?
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That is not to say Saddam didn't slaughter plenty of Kurds with gas, just that he wasn't engaged in genocide in Jalaba. He claims he read about it in the newspaper, and it was to be one of the charges at his trial, but they didn't get around to it.
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kim:
There were some postwar allegations that both sides used chemical weapons, but they've mostly been unsubstantiated as far as the Iranian side's use. The Jalaba attack was certainly just Iraqi weapons, despite some postwar US comments to the contrary (probably just because we were so opposed to Iran so much at the time).

The Iranians showed no serious chemical weapons capacity at any time during the war, while the Iraqis were flinging it around with little concern for civilian casualties.

So no, I don't believe it was from bilateral use.

...and the use of Iraqi nerve gas and mustard gas against the Kurds was very, very well documented.

So Jim, what you are saying is that as an ally of Iraq, the US purchased Soviet equipment for Saddam? Clinton shook hands with the leader of Red China but that didn't make them allies, or did it? Because we favored what we thought was the least of two evils does not make us allies of either. If only your knowledge and logic matched your proclivity at typing bullshit.

kim:

ryan a, Khomeini was certainly more geopolitically frightening to us then than Saddam was. Can we have a mulligan on the '80's in the Mideast?

a mulligan is about right when it comes to hussein. that's a good description of it. it was a bad shot. unfortunately, some of the fallout is the fact that we have a large chunk of Iraqis who don't exactly love us.

it's not like people in the ME have no memory...I'm sure they remember the fact that we buddied up to hussein in the 80's, and the shah in the 70s, when we thought we could get some good geopolitical mileage out of each of them.

that might be part of the reason why there isn't always a great deal of trust for us over there.

backing autocrats has its negatives, of course. but a lot of people tend to forget that.

Zelsdorf:

Because we favored what we thought was the least of two evils does not make us allies of either.

Indeed, we were never allied with Iraq. This is true. But we certainly had our relations didn't we? We had our reasons for dealing with them, and they weren't all about justice and liberty, that's for sure.

We dealt with Hussein in the 1980s, just as we are dealing with Mushareff of Pakistan today, for certain geopolitical reasons. These choices have their positive and negative aspects, of course.

The drawbacks of supporting/working with autocrats while purporting democratic ideals are pretty self explanatory.

But then, when and where do we draw the lin