Saddam offered to go into exile 1 month before Iraq war

[alohamonkey]

"There were no WMDs" - then how do you explain US troops injured by sarin gas from an in-flight mixing sarin warhead rigged as an IED?  Or the 500 other WMD finds in Iraq:

Hmmmmm . . . I wonder where they learned this from:

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0103/012803gsn.htm

Army gave chem-bio warfare training to Iraqis
By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire January 28, 2003

The U.S. Army trained 19 Iraqi military officers in the United States in offensive and defensive chemical, biological and radiological warfare from 1957 to 1967, according to an official Army letter published in the late 1960s.
While the training was described as mostly defensive, it also included offensive instruction in such subjects as principles of using chemical, biological and radiological weapons, and calculating chemical munitions requirements, according to a Dec. 12, 1969, letter from then-Army Chief of Legislative Liaison Col. Raymond Reid to then-U.S. Representative Robert Kastenmeier, D-Wis. The letter was published later that month in the Congressional Record.
Iraqi and other foreign officers received the free instruction through the Pentagon's Military Assistance Program, according to the letter, at a time when the United States was seeking to counter Soviet power and influence around the world. Iran, then a close U.S. ally, and up to three dozen other countries, mostly Western countries, also received such instruction from the early 1950s through 1969, the letter said. The training was provided at the U.S. Army Chemical School at Fort McClellan, Ala., it said.
The instruction for Iraq was provided before U.S.-Iraqi diplomatic relations were severed at the time of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and prior to Saddam Hussein taking power in Baghdad, first as vice president in 1968.
"It was obviously very thorough instruction we provided them," said Raymond Zilinskas, director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, after seeing the letter recently.
The letter prompted criticism from Kastenmeier, a prominent critic of U.S. chemical warfare policy at the time.
"I am disturbed over some of the more specific implications of the facts provided me by the Army, and I question the overall utility of continuing to disseminate offensive expertise in these forms of warfare so widely," he said on the House floor later that month.
Offensive Training
A small percentage of the training provided Iraq was devoted to offensive instruction, according to Reid's letter. Iraqi officers took two types of courses.
One was called Chemical Officer Orientation, which provided general military education training such as map reading, weapons familiarization and also "unconventional warfare" including "principles of CBR [chemical, biological and radiological weapons] employment," "conducting CBR training," "calculation of chemical munitions requirements," intelligence organization and operations, and various CBR protective instruction. Other course elements included "defense against biological attack," "fundamentals of nuclear weapons effects," and "CBR protective devices and equipment." Seven percent of the instruction was offensive in nature, according to the letter.
The other course, called Chemical Officer Career Associate, included "all categories of training," with 4 percent of the course offering offensive instruction, the letter said.
Despite the small percentages, Reid's letter noted a difficulty in differentiating offensive and defensive instruction.
"As you will note from the course descriptions, the emphasis is on defensive aspects. However, it is not possible to separate offensive tactics from defense since some knowledge of the offense is necessary to prepare an adequate defense," he wrote.
"In addition, there can be no absolute guarantee that defensive tactics will not have some utility in framing offensive tactics," he wrote.
The instruction did not appear to teach participants how to manufacture such weapons, but rather, how to use them, manage them and defend against them.
"If they were trained by the U.S. military, it would be unlikely they got any training in development [or] production," said Terence Taylor, president of the Washington office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former U.N. arms inspector in Iraq.
The Training in Context
The principal objective for such programs at the time, said Jeffrey Bale, an analyst at the Monterey Institute, was to counter Soviet and allied influence and capabilities.
"During the Cold War, the United States government provided all sorts of training to military personnel ... and I think the primary motivation at the time was to train these people to make them more effective to potentially resisting any kinds of Soviet military operations or subversive activity," he said.
U.S. military officials at the time believed that the Soviet Union had an advanced chemical weapons program and had been supplying Middle Eastern countries with defensive equipment.
The U.S. assistance, Bale said, followed "a typical alliance pattern dating back to antiquity," of working with real or potentially unsavory regimes because it might offer help against a more serious threat.
Chemical and biological weapons at the time did not have the stigma for the military they have today, according to Harvard professor Matthew Meselson, co-director of the Harvard-Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation.
"We [the United States] were very open, we advertised it because we wanted public approval. We needed funding. It was advertised as being humane, less expensive. The argument was you would lose fewer American lives if you fought a war because you would knock the enemy out right away," he said.
A prominent 1968 book by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said the Army had sponsored a publicity campaign arguing biological and chemical weapons were a humane and effective deterrent.
"The Hiroshima argument I understand. Why would one ever train anyone else in offensive CW, BW use? That is bizarre," said Tim Trevan, a former spokesman for the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq.
"It is not a humane way of killing people ... I can't imagine a humane way of dying with chemical weapons" or from "using biological weapons under any circumstance," he said.
All training was first approved, Reid's letter said, by the U.S. ambassador and the chief military representative in the requesting country, as well as by the senior military commander responsible for the geographic region in which the country was located, the Army, and the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in coordination with the State Department.
Approval from the latter, Reid wrote, was intended to ensure that "training is conducted within the overall foreign policy objectives of the United States."
More Iraqi officers were among those receiving the training than any other Middle Eastern nationality during that period. Of 36 Middle Eastern officers who attended the training, 19 were from Iraq. One Israeli received instruction during the period, according to the letter.
The 36 participating countries requested the training and were not solicited by the United States, according to Reid's letter.
Lessons Not Learned Well
Iraq's use of chemical weapons suggests it probably applied its U.S. instruction poorly if at all, experts said.
"The tactics they developed during the Iran-Iraq war [were] something that didn't exist during the first few years of the war," Zilinskas said.
In the early years, they used chemical weapons "indiscriminately," he said.
"After about four years, they started to use them more reliably. It seemed to me they developed that pretty much as they went along," he said.
"They seemed to be on a pretty steep learning curve on the tactical use of chemical weapons," said Jonathan Tucker, a visiting senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace.
"They used some on their troops by mistake. It doesn't appear that they learned very much from the training they'd received," he said.
Tucker noted, for instance, an Iraqi mistake in which forces fired mustard gas onto an Iranian position on a hill, "and as the gas was heavier than air, it floated down into the trenches where the Iraqi forces were based."
Iraqi forces eventually used multiple chemical agents, including mustard, tabun and sarin, to cause more than 20,000 Iranian casualties during the war and used mustard and other agents in 1988 to kill an estimated 5,000 Iraqi Kurds at Halabja, according to a British government report published last year.
Chemical and Biological Warfare Cancelled
Kastenmeier, in his comments in 1969, expressed concern that the Army's acknowledgement of the offensive components of the programs would "seem to weaken existing deterrents against the use of CBW [chemical and biological weapons]" and undermine new policies enunciated by then-President Richard Nixon restricting chemical and biological weapons use by U.S. forces.
There was underway at that time a major U.S. policy shift against using chemical and biological weapons in combat that would eventually lead to the United States signing the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972.
Only a few weeks before Reid sent his letter, Nixon issued a statement on Nov. 25 saying the United States opposed first use of lethal chemical weapons and incapacitating chemicals and announcing that he would ask the Senate's approval to ratify the Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibiting the first use of chemical and biological weapons. Nixon also then signed the Biological Weapons Convention and vowed to renounce the use of lethal biological agents and weapons, and all other methods of biological warfare, and confine biological research to defensive measures.
"Mankind already carries in its own hands too many of the seeds of its own destruction. By the examples we set today, we hope to contribute to an atmosphere of peace and understanding between nations and among men," Nixon said in a much-quoted passage from the statement.
It is not clear when Army training of foreign nationals in offensive chemical, biological and radiological warfare was discontinued. A spokesman for the Pentagon's military assistance agency said the agency had no records on hand dating back to the time of the program.
The Army Chemical School, where the training was provided in the 1960s, continues today, providing U.S. soldiers and a detachment of foreign nationals defensive training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.

[CNHT]

http://whatreallyhappened.com/

There are many articles there, which are you referring to? Certainly not the holocaust denial.

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

Who was to protect this man's dignity as his forearm was officially shattered for the offense of dissent against the government?

Saddam was the master of torture. Iraq was never free.

It is not necessary to be an apologist for a monster like Saddam, just to be against aggressive war. It is OK to be against both.
It's not an either or thing.

Saddam was a madman and many people suffered under his regime, the likes of which we've never seen in this country.

Madmen come in all colors.
Maybe the few relatives left of the Native americans, could tell us a few stories as well.

[mvpel]

Madmen come in all colors.
Maybe the few relatives left of the Native americans, could tell us a few stories as well.

One such madman is commemorated on the US $20 bill.

[CNHT]

Madmen come in all colors.
Maybe the few relatives left of the Native americans, could tell us a few stories as well.

What? You don't believe in open borders? The natives had no right to keep the newcomers out.
They just wanted to work the land, as it were.

[alohamonkey]

U.S. And Iraq Go Way Back

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/31/world/main534798.shtml

"...It was Rumsfeld, now defense secretary and then a special presidential envoy, whose December 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein led to the normalization of ties between Washington and Baghdad, according to the Washington Post.

The cozy relationship was an effort to build a regional bulwark against America's enemies in Iran.

The newspaper says a review of a large tranche of government documents reveals that the administrations of President Reagan and the first President Bush both authorized providing Iraq with intelligence and logistical support, and okayed the sale of dual use items — those with military and civilian applications — that included chemicals and germs, even anthrax and bubonic plague..."

[CNHT]

U.S. And Iraq Go Way Back

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/31/world/main534798.shtml

"...It was Rumsfeld, now defense secretary and then a special presidential envoy, whose December 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein led to the normalization of ties between Washington and Baghdad, according to the Washington Post.

The cozy relationship was an effort to build a regional bulwark against America's enemies in Iran.

The newspaper says a review of a large tranche of government documents reveals that the administrations of President Reagan and the first President Bush both authorized providing Iraq with intelligence and logistical support, and okayed the sale of dual use items — those with military and civilian applications — that included chemicals and germs, even anthrax and bubonic plague..."

Exactly. Trouble is, if you want to befriend another country, they often expect you fight in their battles with them. Just like some of us fight each other's battles, and others are truly 'non-interventionists'.

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

Madmen come in all colors.
Maybe the few relatives left of the Native americans, could tell us a few stories as well.

What? You don't believe in open borders? The natives had no right to keep the newcomers out.
They just wanted to work the land, as it were.

Exactly. Them thar has war in them oils (petro).  Them thar had war for them skins (fur).
Them yar had war for them gold

Follow the money trail.

[mvpel]

So again I ask, doesn't the blood on the hands of the US through our exploitation of the Ba'athist's brutal regime as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism burden our nation with the responsibility to make amends for the crimes committed against innocent Iraqis while LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan, and Bush the Elder turned a blind eye?

Does our nation bear any responsibility for the dispossession and genocide of Native Americans?  For the racist internment of Japanese-Americans?  For slavery and Jim Crow?

If so, then why not for Iraq?

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

So again I ask, doesn't the blood on the hands of the US through our exploitation of the Ba'athist's brutal regime as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism burden our nation with the responsibility to make amends for the crimes committed against innocent Iraqis while LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan, and Bush the Elder turned a blind eye?

Does our nation bear any responsibility for the dispossession and genocide of Native Americans?  For the racist internment of Japanese-Americans?  For slavery and Jim Crow?

If so, then why not for Iraq?

Precisely why these questions should be brought up to the ("the"-intentional placement)  Her Majesty, the Queen of England.
An interesting tid-bit of information, note one of the "Godfathers" lol: http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/page5565.asp

[alohamonkey]

I understand what you're saying and I do think we bear some responsibility.  But if you start going through the list, we would owe most countries for our involvement in their internal affairs . . . Iran, Nicaragua, Vietnam, all of Latin America, most of South America, Afghanistan, etc.

Where do we draw the line?

The reason we invaded Iraq was because we were told there was "proof" that they had obtained WMD.  We didn't invade their country because we wanted to right our wrongs.  We didn't invade Iraq to save the Iraqi civilians.  We invaded because Saddam and Iraq were a "threat" to the United States.  If Saddam agreed to go to exile, we could have spared 70,000+ people's lives.  We could have spared tens of thousands of injured and maimed U.S. soldiers.  Do you think these people's lives are worth proving a point?

[brandon dean]

So again I ask, doesn't the blood on the hands of the US through our exploitation of the Ba'athist's brutal regime as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism burden our nation with the responsibility to make amends for the crimes committed against innocent Iraqis while LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan, and Bush the Elder turned a blind eye?

Does our nation bear any responsibility for the dispossession and genocide of Native Americans?  For the racist internment of Japanese-Americans?  For slavery and Jim Crow?

If so, then why not for Iraq?

if you call bombing innocent people to stir up a civil war our way of setting up a bulwark against communism, or if you call occupying iraq the way to "make amends for the crimes committed against innocent Iraqis," I'm afraid you've lost me... correct me if I'm reading that wrong...
but do ten wrongs make a right?  we financed saddam hussein and the iranians during their war in the 80's.  the "bulwark" against communism is a false paradigm.  we funded the russians and the communist chinese all through the cold war.
do the transgressions of our ancestors against those people you named rest on our heads?  no, but the transgressions against people today committed in the name of the People do lie on our heads.  you can't erase the past, but you can try to improve the future.

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

http://whatreallyhappened.com/

There are many articles there, which are you referring to? Certainly not the holocaust denial.

The articles pertaining to the iraq war. Silly me for not specifying.

[MTPorcupine3]

This reminds me of Waco. The feds had plenty of opportunity to arrest David Koresh without any bloodshed....but that wasn't the plan.

See my interview with Clive Doyle, Waco massacre survivor...

Broadband: http://tinyurl.com/3atwft   
Dial-up: http://tinyurl.com/2prlkn

Or see "Waco: Rules of Engagement" (do a  net search).

For those of you "conspiracy theory debunkers" who think that the past is passed, and "it doesn't matter": If you don't learn (real) history, you're doomed to repeat it.

[J’raxis 270145]

The government of Iraq starved the Iraqi children, not the sanctions.

Iraq was a very prosperous country prior to the original U.S. attacks in 1991, and the subsequent sanctions.

Prior to the first Gulf War in 1991 and even after eight years of war with Iran, Iraq was ranked 15 out of 130 countries on the 1990 United Nations Human Development Index. Before the first Bush invasion, Iraq had the highest percentage of college-educated citizens in the Middle East and above average overall literacy rates. According to the World Health Organization, prior to 1991 health care reached approximately 97 percent of the urban population and 78 percent of rural residents, while the infant mortality rate was well below average for developing countries.

— The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time, by Antonia Juhasz.

I do not dispute that Saddam was a tyrant. But if you're going to keep posting one-sided or outright factually incorrect arguments, and willfully ignore what the other side did in the history of the U.S. and Iraq, I'm going to have to keep posting defenses for Saddam.