One can't grab their share of resposibility, of any good actions/policies, by grabbing the flag and drapping themselves in some sort of Patriotic goody goody feeling, cheering "We're Number One", and than scream "I'm Not Responsible" for the bad done 'In Our Names'! In a true Democracy, something we still haven't obtained, the Whole shares The Responsibility Equally!
I don't belong to a lot of online boards, not enough time and one gets really tired really fast of reading idiotic responses from lazy lamebrains who try and act like their guro's, limbaugh being only one. And a guro he is to a group of {add any label one wants here, they are numourous}, that give their empty racist/bigotted thoughts with nothing to back them up or attempt to back them up with the empty thoughts of others equally lamebrained {add guro name here, they to are numourous also}, making a damn good living off these sheople as they lead them like the herders they are. And the lazy fools, who refuse to think for themselves, suck this bullshit up!
Lets take a look at our dealings with Saddam, who won't RIP, I'm sure. You can take your pick of Many tyrants and dictators who over the years we've supported with a total disregard to the countries citizens they led. Paying lip service about 'Human Rights' and 'Freedom' and 'Democracy', which we seem to think that by Destroying Others Countries and Their People', they will except and embrace with Open Arms these self instilled ideologies, we say we would like many of these countries to have, hell we pay lip service on our own soil to many of our own!
U.S. and Saddam:
First take a quick walk down memory lane with a short but historically filled video that Eric, over at bushflash put together shortly after Saddam was captured:
Thanks For The Memories
There's much more to the relationship but this gives one an idea of what has been going on all these years.
One thing about this technology, even for the lazy, one needs only read or view something get backtrack links or grab names, reports, files, whatever out of the read or view and do quick backtracks themselves, retrieving the evidence or the pros and cons, the Real Lazy, like the limbaugh himselve or his wanna-be's seem to find this exhausting as they don't even attempt to gig deeper
Now lets take a look at some of these parts of the Documented Known history:
Front page of Italian Newspaper Corriera della Sera
As Dean Hartwell, political scientist, you can visit his site Here, writes:
Hussein's Bloody Hands Drip on United States
With the execution of Saddam Hussein, the United States has lost an ally-turned-enemy. What it has gained remains to be seen.
When Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980, the Carter Administration applauded. When he used chemical weapons during that war, the Reagan Administration looked the other way. When he told us he would invade Kuwait in 1990, the Bush I Administration said we would stay out of it.
The same man whom Donald Rumsfeld went to make peace with in 1984 as an emissary of the Reagan Administration was our new punching bag from Desert Storm on. Several times under Presidents Bush I and Clinton we bombed Iraq, ostensibly for disobeying United Nations resolutions. Yet we had hid our anger over his previous transgressions, like the invasion of Iran, because they favored us. Whether we admit to it or not, we assisted Hussein in his early crimes.
If the Iraqis ever do switch to a democracy, they ought to consider the lack of principle the United States has shown in dealing with Saddam Hussein. A nation that says it opposes invasions of other nations and the murder of its people cannot hold the hand of one who commits these crimes. Even if the nation shakes off the hold of the dictator, it cannot shake off the blood from his hands.
Now Hartwell does a quick writeup of our involvement in the crimes of Saddam, and as I said above one only needs to pick certain things and find the proof of themselves, it's all out there and documented, hell with this technology it's even hard to scrub the evidence, the facts, the talking points on news video's, you name it it can be found.
Lets visit another recent post of points:
Source: Juan Cole
But the following comes from Black Listed News
Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein
The tendency to treat Saddam and Iraq in a historical vacuum, and in isolation from the superpowers, however, has hidden from Americans their own culpability in the horror show that has been Iraq for the past few decades. Initially, the US used the Baath Party as a nationalist foil to the Communists. Then Washington used it against Iran. The welfare of Iraqis themselves appears to have been on no one's mind, either in Washington or in Baghdad.
The British-installed monarchy was overthrown by an officer's coup in 1958, led by Abdul Karim Qasim. The US was extremely upset, and worried that the new regime would not be a reliable oil exporter and that it might leave the Baghdad Pact of 1955, which the US had put together against the Soviet Union (grouping Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Britain and the US). (Qasim did leave the pact in 1959, which according to a US official of that time, deeply alarmed Washington.)
Iraq in the 1940s and 1950s had become an extremely unequal society, with a few thousand (mostly Sunni Arab) families owning half of the good land. On their vast haciendas, poor rural Shiites worked for a pittance. In the 1950s, two new mass parties grew like wildfire, the Communist Party of Iraq and the Arab Baath Socialist Party. They attracted first-generation intellectuals, graduates of the rapidly expanding school system, as well as workers and peasants. The crushing inequalities of Iraq under the monarchy produced widespread anger.
If one visits the title link, or the Juan Cole link, one will find more backtrack links and information to each item listed below:
1} The first time the US enabled Saddam Hussein came in 1959. In that year, a young Saddam, from the boondock town of Tikrit but living with an uncle in Baghdad, tried to assassinate Qasim. He failed and was wounded in the leg. Saddam had, like many in his generation, joined the Baath Party, which combined socialism, Arab nationalism, and the aspiration for a one-party state.
2} After the failed coup attempt, Saddam fled to Cairo, where he attended law school in between bar brawls, and where it is alleged that he retained his CIA connections there, being put on a stipend by the agency via the Egyptian government. He frequently visited US operatives at the Indiana Cafe. Getting him back on his feet in Cairo was the second episode of US aid to Saddam.
3} In February of 1963 the military wing of the Baath Party, which had infiltrated the officer corps and military academy, made a coup against Qasim, whom they killed. There is evidence from Middle Eastern sources, including interviews conducted at the time by historian Hanna Batatu, that the CIA cooperated in this coup and gave the Baathists lists of Iraqi Communists (who were covert, having infiltrated the government or firms). Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer of the 1960s, alleged that the US played a significant role in this Baath coup and that it was mostly funded "with American money.". Morris's allegation was confirmed to me by an eyewitness with intimate knowledge of the situation, who said that that the CIA station chief in Baghdad gave support to the Baathists in their coup. One other interviewee, who served as a CIA operative in Baghdad in 1964, denied to me the agency's involvement. But he was at the time junior and he was not an eyewitness to the events of 1963, and may not have been told the straight scoop by his colleagues. Note that some high Baathists appear to have been unaware of the CIA involvement, as well. In the murky world of tradecraft, a lot of people, even on the same team, keep each other in the dark. UPI quotes another, or perhaps the same, official, saying that the coup came as a surprise to Langley. In my view, unlikely.
4} In 1968, the civilian wing of the Baath Party came to power in a second coup.
5} The second Baath regime in Iraq disappointed the Nixon and Ford administrations by reaching out to the tiny remnants of the Communist Party and by developing good relations with the Soviet Union. In response, Nixon supported the Shah's Iran in its attempts to use the Iraqi Kurds to stir up trouble for the Baath Party, of which Saddam Hussein was a behind the scenes leader. As supporting the Kurdish struggle became increasingly expensive, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran decided to abandon the Kurds. He made a deal with the Iraqis at Algiers in 1975, and Saddam immediately ordered an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan. The US acquiesced in this betrayal of the Kurds, and made no effort to help them monetarily. Kissinger maintained that the whole operation had been the shah's, and the shah suddenly terminated it, leaving the US with no alternative but to acquiesce. But that is not entirely plausible. The operation was supported by the CIA, and the US didn't have to act only through an Iranian surrogate. Kissinger no doubt feared he couldn't get Congress to fund help to the Kurds during the beginnings of the Vietnam syndrome. In any case, the 1975 US about-face helped Saddam consolidate control over northern Iraq.
6} When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, he again caught the notice of US officials. The US was engaged in an attempt to contain Khomeinism and the new Islamic Republic. Especially after the US faced attacks from radicalized Shiites in Lebanon linked to Iran, and from the Iraqi Da`wa Party, which engaged in terrorism against the US and French embassies in Kuwait, the Reagan administration determined to deal with Saddam from late 1983, giving him important diplomatic encouragement. Historians are deeply indebted to Joyce Battle's Briefing Book at the National Security Archives, GWU, which presents key documents she sprung through FOIA requests, and which she analyzed for the first time.
7} The US gave practical help to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War:
8} The Reagan administration worked behind the scenes to foil Iran's motion of censure against Iraq for using chemical weapons.
9} The Reagan administration not only gave significant aid to Saddam, it attempted to recruit other friends for him.
10} After the Gulf War of 1991, when Shiites and Kurds rose up against Saddam Hussein, the Bush senior administration sat back and allowed the Baathists to fly helicopter gunships and to massively repress the uprising. President GHW Bush had called on Iraqis to rise up against their dictator, but when they did so he left them in the lurch. This inaction, deriving from a fear that a Shiite-dominated Iraq would ally with Tehran, allowed Saddam to remain in power until 2003.
Now these are just a couple of recent postings but all of the above has been known and followed, by many, over the years. Giving voice of opposition to these practises of destructive policies as the majorities ignored what was going on 'In Their Names'!
This is the history of our Nation, not only as to the above, but in the Policies set forth under the guise of 'National Security' which has only made 'National Security' even less than 'Secure' but giving Wealth and Power to the Military Industrial Complex and Rampent Growth of the Corporate Mindset of a Capitalist Society run amouk!
Throughout our history there have been, and continue to be, Voices of Opposition to what has been going on, knowing full well they themselves Share In The Responsibilities of the Actions set forth, believing that which we teach and say has a deeper meaning and truth and when we sway from our words of describing ourselves not only do we suffer the consequences but those consequences effect many many others as well!
Oh by the way, Saddam isn't the only one, while you might still be wondering where oh where bin Laden might be and Why He Hasn't Been Brought To Justice!
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