Arming Iraq: Whoops, Wrong Arms
Published October 30, 2006
Ever since George W. and company climbed on their horses to go off and corral them some terrorists in Iraq, there's been talk of them going even further afield. Periodically, one of the gang, Deadeye Dick, Dapper Don, or even Curious George himself would throw a clay pigeon up in the air for target practice to see if expanding the territory was a viable option.
During the days of full scale insurrection, when there was still fighting going on between American troops and a visible enemy, there were all sorts of suggestions being tossed around in the press about who was supplying what to whom. The two names at the top of everyone's list as being the biggest suppliers of arms to those resisting American occupation were always Iran and Syria.
Now, neither country has the best of reputations when it comes to the training and arming of those whose interests run counter to that of the West and animosity between Iran, Syria, and the United States has been something that's been pretty much a guarantee for the last twenty-five plus years. (All of which made the Reagan administration's sale of arms to Iran in the mid-eighties to circumvent Congress' refusal to fund a terrorist organization — the Contras — even more cynical.)
Syria has been the ipso facto ruler of Lebanon for who knows how long, and has been rumoured to have been supplying aid and succour to the proscribed organizations for even longer. But in spite of that, the U.S. has not made a habit out of making overt threatening gestures toward that country. Whether there is some connection between that and Syrian willingness to torture individuals at the behest of Western governments is anyone's guess.
Ever since the overthrow of the Peacock Throne of the Shah of Iran (another example of the U.S. propping up a despotic ruler and earning the hatred of the locals) by the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s, relations between the U.S. and Iran have been on this side of outright war. In the hopes of doing away with them without any direct involvement, they heavily armed the regime of Saddam Hussein of Iraq and had him attempt their dirty work.
Unfortunately, he was far too incompetent and insecure a leader to have permitted the survival of able military minds and the Iran/Iraq war became a bloody stalemate, with neither side ceding territory and both sides suffering massive losses. It was only after it was discovered that Saddam had experimented with biological warfare on a Kurdish town in Iraq that the Americans began having second thoughts about him as an ally in the region.
When he decided to re-annex Kuwait back into his territory, it was the excuse the Americans needed to move against him. Proving the old adage "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" has merit. What they didn't succeed in doing in the early '90s, they have partially accomplished now. Saddam Hussein is no longer ruler of Iraq, but neither, it seems, is anyone else. They have a government in name only, and if it wasn't for the American army and friends, they probably wouldn't last a month due to continual outbreaks of violence ranging from suicide bombings to minor firefights on an almost daily basis.
Richard Marcus is a long-haired Canadian iconoclast who writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees it at Leap In The Dark and Epic India Magazine.
- Arming Iraq: Whoops, Wrong Arms
- Published: October 30, 2006
- Type: News
- Section: Politics
- Filed Under: Politics: International, Politics: Policy, Politics: U.S., Politics: War and Terrorism
- Writer: Richard Marcus
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Ever since the overthrow of the Peacock Throne of the Shah of Iran (another example of the U.S. propping up a despotic ruler and earning the hatred of the locals) by the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s
Another small correction. We earned the hatred of a great many Iranians by not continuing to back the Shah and his moderate democratic reforms and instead abandonning them to the fundamentalists. But those million plus sensible Iranians are now dead, in prison or fled to the west.
Dave
Dave,
Moderate democratic reforms just like GW's like having a secret police (Savak)spying on citizens and jailing anyone that speaks out about the Royal Family.
You mean that kind of Government Dave?
The only ones to enjoy the western influences brought about by the Shah and his backers (the US) were the rich elite of Iran. The poor were still poor and those few who were rich, fled to Beverly Hills, never to return.
Godehafez
Dave Malle: We earned the hatred of a great many Iranians by not continuing to back the Shah and his moderate democratic reforms and instead abandonning them to the fundamentalists. But those million plus sensible Iranians are now dead, in prison or fled to the west.
To be more specific, West L.A. Apparently they don't hate us that much.
"...We earned the hatred of a great many Iranians by not continuing to back the Shah and his moderate democratic reforms ..."
But we had backed the shah, in fact we invented the shah, when we 'needed' to overthrow the demcratically elected Mossadegh, because, well, because a democratically elected guy just must be a commie and therefore expendable.
Most of Saddam's old munitions were Soviet, not American, but we've been inadvertently providing arms to people who'd like to kill us since we toppled his regime.
Iraq was, to quote Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, in a speech he gave in Washington, DC, on Thursday, November 13, 2003
"awash in munitions"
from the second we occupied it. Feith also acknowledged anti-coalition forces were well funded. And he acknowledged the international jihadi movement had come to Iraq.
Gonzo's pointed this out before, and he and I have disagreed about al-Queda's ability to use those weapons in attacks on the US homeland, but this simple fact remains:
Between deliberately providing arms and training to Muslim fundies in the 1980's in their jihad against the Soviets, and accidently opening up Saddam Hussien's stockpiles in the lastest Iraq war...
One of the main suppliers of arms to radical Islamists in the past 25 years has been the Bush family.
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"Saddam had experimented with biological warfare on a Kurdish town in Iraq "
Richard, by way of correction, it was, in fact, a chemical weapon attack against the Kurds not a biological agent.
Saddam had previously used WMD against Iran (nerve agents, mustard gas) during the Iran/Iraq War, killing an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 over the duration of the war.
The incident you cite - Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan - killed approximately 7,000 people.
Saddam also reportedly tried to use nerve agents again in the aftermath of the First Gulf War agains the Shia uprising in the south, but the air-dropped weapons failed to go off.