Good job Jay. Now we have a time line. Great. Now, lets examine that, but before we do, let me just say that I find it amazing how our TV/internet/fast food society has a major memory loss problem when it comes to our involvement in past events. So, lets take a trip down memory lane…
1970’s – I’ll try to stick to Jay Bell’s timeline, but first lets take a trip to the 70’s. Yes, the 70’s… a time of bell-bottoms, dropping acid, and relentless military sales to IRAN. Yes…that’s IRAN, despite the fact that they were a theocracy no better then they are today, and despite the UN resolutions at the time to not contribute to the Iran/Iraq conflict. Then Iran screws us, takes a few hostages, and stops wanting to trade with us. Our weapons sales in Iran are something that we conveniently forget today. Now fast forward…
1980 – We remember that Iraq invaded Iran today, but we conveniently forget that 1980 was the year Saddam was placed in power by the U.S. (Remember that republican saint Reagan and his lovely administration that should feel vaguely familiar) TO INVADE IRAN. So basically, Saddam was doing what he was SUPPOSED TO DO according to us. Millions dead? A GOOD PORTION OF THAT IS OUR FAULT.
During this era when the commies were gonna either kill us or take away our freedom (instead of the terrorists today…ah how much has changed), Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, and everyone in the Middle east was fighting as usual. Iraq was run by the secular military dictator Saddam Hussein (who was supposed to be our puppet), and Iran was run by an Islamic theocracy, and we were happier then pigs in ****. We thought that by putting Saddam into power and having him invade Iran, he’d overthrow it easily due to political unrest in Iran. We were wrong, and a theocracy still exists in that country to this day.
Hmmm, now…where could our interest have possibly been in this conflict? Well, the Islamic Theocracy in Iran didn’t want to trade with us and didn’t want to deal with our unilateral bullying, and didn’t HAVE too because of the black gold that they had access too. And, the leaders getting to keep their people in poverty while blaming it on us was an added bonus to gain support from there citizens too I’m sure. We were afraid that they would either take over or ally with other countries in the Mid-East and control more of the regions oil; especially Iraqi oil. We figured if we put a puppet in power (Saddam) that he would do as we said, and he’d trade with us as well. You see, as a general foreign policy rule, we like to sponsor dictatorships in other countries, so long as they do as we say and trade the way we want. Just look at Chile, Indonesia, and Guatemala for starters. Well, with Saddam, it worked for a while.
1983 – Holy camels and KAPOW! KABLAM! WE LOOOVED SADDAM in ’83. Take a good look at our good old friend Rumsfield shaking hands with his buddy here during the St. Reagan era:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
By now we are extremely happy over the killing of Kurds because they were helping Iran at the time. And besides, they are brown people, and another general rule of foreign policy we really don’t give 2 pooh-logs about brown people. However, now we have a dilemma…we THOUGHT that Saddam would have overthrown the theocracy in Iran within a much shorter time frame; but instead, Iran was invading Northern Iraq in return. Boy did that make us nervous. VERY NERVOUS considering the massive Military sales by the U.S. to IRAN in the 70’s, up until the Tehran embassy hostage crisis, which was sort of the focal point of when they stopped wanting to work with us. Can’t let the rest of the world notice that! Keep in mind that we sold these weapons to Iran during a time when a U.N. resolution to NOT contribute to the conflict was in effect (that we signed). Who? What? US break a U.N. agreement in the name of the almighty dollar. NEVER.
So..major, major problems here. We support Iran with military sales so they’d trade with us. They decide not to later, and try to both take over and ally with other oil baring countries Mid-east, with a side goal of getting them to stop giving us oil too, all the while USING OUR WEAPONS AND MILITARY EQUIPMENT THAT WE SOLD TO THEM TO DO IT. So, we put an evil dictator in power during a time of political unrest in both countries (Saddam), thinking he’d overthrow the Iranian theocracy, EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE OUR WEAPONS.
Well, St. Reagan and his many Christian soldiers decide that this is totally not fair for Iran to have our weapons, and Iraq to not. SO what’s our solution? That’s right boys and girls…GIVE SADDAM WEAPONS AS WELL. So, in ‘82 we remove Iraq from the terrorist hate list (literally, the state dept had a list), and we decide to supply them with weapons. By ‘83 those weapons are used on brown people both in Iraq and Iran, and we of course don’t care.
You see, none of that silly lesson learnin’ from arming Iran and having it backfire on us..no no no, not in ‘merica! Not when Capitalism is the answer to everything. So, we start giving Saddam money, weapons, and even materials and intelligence to make chemical agents. Screw the Geneva convention…they’re only brown people anyways.
It’s good to see that high military budget at work, even in the 80’s.
1986-88’: Wow…big surprise, chemical agents are used on brown people. This actually started in 83’ or so from reports out of Iran, right around the time Rummy gets to shake hands with his buddy.
But, that’s O.K. As another foreign policy rule, for the U.S., the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to brown people (unless it suits our agenda, like in the most recent gulf war). Besides, we decided it was unfair because we armed Iran, so we had to up the ante somehow when we armed Iraq, with Saddam being our buddy and all, and what better way to do it then with Chemical Agents, and other weapons against the Geneva Convention on white people.
And besides, Capitalism is SUCH a great thing. From 85-90, our companies sold Saddam Anthrax, Clostridium Botulinum (Biological Agent Botulism), Histoplasma Capsulatum (biological agent), Brucella Melitensis (Bio), Clostridium Perfingen (a gas that causes gangrene, biological), and E. Coli, among chemical agents. And, of course, we sold a lot of what was called “duel technologies,” or technologies that could be used to make weapons but can also be masked for other things. Some household companies involved: Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Bechtel, Caterpillar, DuPont, and Kodak just to name a few. This was all in a 1994 Senate report.
So we are having SOOO much fun, because now we get to try out these cool weapons on brown people to see how they work, and we don’t even have to actually take the blame for using them ourselves. And, from 85-90, our companies our flourishing over there; the dept. of commerce approved 1.5 billion $$ for duel use technologies, and $308 million in helicopters and aircrafts, and millions of unaccounted for military related trade through private companies.
So, in case you don’t know how this wonderful capitalistic system works, let me explain for those of you who are slow, or just missing the whole thing. We, the citizens, work hard to give money to our government (taxes) which is used to fund weapons programs instead of schools or healthcare that we can’t afford (military budget) so private companies can sell the materials and technologies to dictatorships like Iraq, without having to pay taxes on those sales, making a few people (white people) and a lot of brown people dead. So far our system is working well, it would seem, unless of course your brown or poor to upper middle class America. O.K., O.K., basically it works well for a few hundred people or less while a few billion get screwed to varied degrees….but back to the subject of the Kurds.
After the liberal use of weapons of mass destruction on his own people, according to an affidavit by Howard Teicher (from St. Reagan’s and St. Bush Sr’s. security council), Saddam even got some advice on how to step on up the air raids on Iran. So, it would seem that these God-loving republicans back then couldn’t have given rats behind about the evil terrorists acts of Saddam that some of these same men are so recently “appalled” by today. Hmmm…it’s a good thing our value’s administration is running the show…
Now while this was going on, we were figuring out ways to step up our military presence in the mid-east, and yes, that’s right, figure out ways to get oil through trade with Saddam from Iraq. Can’t stop commerce, can we.
1988 – More dead, more oil for us, and we don’t care because we’re (or at least a few of us) making coin off it. And besides, they’re brown people anyways.
1990 – Saddam’s egomaniacal behavior gets the best of him, and he decides that he doesn’t want to be a puppet anymore for daddy (the U.S. would be daddy in this case). So, our dirty mistress Saddam breaks the relationship with us, invades Kuwait with our weapons, fires missiles at the Saudi’s with our technology, and start lighting our oil fields (I mean Kuwait’s…uh yeah…Kuwait’s) on fire, and torturing more brown people who were working OUR FIELDS (Whoops…I mean Kuwait’s).
So, here we come full circle again. We supported a dictatorship, again, for oil, and he turns on us. Can’t have that, now can we? It was O.K. that he was gassing, torturing, and killing brown people before…but NOW he’s screwing with our oil, dammit! Time to go to war…
1991 – more brown people killed, some brown people revolt against their dictator, then they are killed, and we don’t care because we manage to make coin off the deal again anyways.
1992 – More brown people killed, and we still don’t care. Still makin’ coin.
1996 – A couple of brown people killed again, along with a revealed campaign to hide banned weapons. This makes us nervous, and we hope that nobody finds the receipts that shows who armed him.
1996- present – Time goes on, more brown people are killed and we still don’t care cause we’re making money. However, apparently billions wasn’t enough, so members of the Bush Administration through the Carlyle group, Halliburton, Unocal, and a few of other wonderful companies try to do a business deal with the Taliban, involving oil from the Caspian Sea. We pull out, the deal falls through, screwing the rich brown people causing the Taliban and the Saudi’s to lose millions upon millions of dollars.
Then, surprise, surprise again, planes crash into our building killing both whites and browns. WHAT!? Did you say WHITES. So it’s off to war we go, to go fight another dictator who, of course, we armed and placed into power during the cold war when the commies were gonna kill us. Seeing a trend yet?
But, there is no oil or anything super cool that we can make money off of in Afghanistan. So, what can we do? I KNOW! We can blame Saddam for 911 because this fast food society is way too stupid too know better, then we can finally get that lose cannon out of power with the best money making scheme yet!
You see, the scheme goes like this: We take money from working America (Taxes) and we put it into our military budget to, this time, finance a war campaign in Iraq. We do this unilaterally so we can take over the oil fields and ONLY our companies will benefit. We don’t pay taxes on all the money we make because it’s overseas, and a few hundred or less people get EVEN MORE RICH then ever before!!!! Yay! Capitalism works so awesome!!!
And we can keep doing it because we’ll make the people afraid to vote out a war time President. Genius! But uh-oh…what if they find out our scheme? Carl Rove, what will we do? “I know!” Rove says. With media talking points to cloud the issue so much that people won’t know what to believe anymore we’ll confuse them. And then, get this (and this is the best part) we’ll scare the crap out of them! Boo! Terrorists are coming! Boooo! Fags are kissing! Boogy-Boogy! If you vote for this guy, God will hate you! Booo! Liberals are trying to have sex with your kids! And so on and nonsensically so on.
And now, we are back to business as usual. 4 more years of the same types of people (and in many cases, the same ACTUAL people) who have been doing these dirty deals since the 70’s running the show; and more brown people, and this time American citizens as well, get to die for it, and that same few hundred or less get to reap the financial rewards. Feel any safer yet? How’s that health care of yours treatin’ ya?
So, you, or the likes of Ann Coulter for that matter, want to talk about the Kurds? How about before we get on our moral high horses about how bad of a guy Saddam is, why don’t we recognize how bad of a guys WE CAN BE sometimes, or at least how bad of guys our leaders which whom we let run the show can be? We want the killing of innocents to stop, how about we stop outright doing it ourselves, and how about we stop enabling dictators to do it for us in the name of the almighty dollar. We want to stop terrorism; we can start right here at home with our foreign policy.
We need to realize that the idea of “free-trade,” “mutual gain,” and our breed of “capitalism” is NOT the answer to everything. We should have let the world continue to be involved with weapons inspections rather then unilaterally trying to make money through taxpayer’s resources. Iraq was a bad dictatorship, no doubt; but so is N. Korea, Iran, Many Middle eastern Countries, Many South American Countries, and Many SE Asian countries, and the list goes on. And remember, many of these dictatorships WE ENABLED. Yet, people wonder why the rest of the world dislikes us so much? We can’t go in and take all the dictatorships militarily, but we need to stop supporting these oppressive dictatorships the way that we do, and we need to work with the world to do the same. No more double standards.
The recent Gulf war is only business as usual folks; another phase in the ongoing dirty business deals that have been going on between us and the middle east for decades now. And the Kurds? Just more brown people that got to die so that the few hundred or less can make money off these deals…that’s all that was. And it will only stop when all the red states as well as the blue are tired of being serfs for a small few, and have had enough of being afraid, and start voting a bit more consciously. I ain’t gonna hold my breath for that day.
There… now that THAT’S settled… anything else any of you would like to talk about?
Now, go find Ann Coulter and get me my thousand bucks… :wink:
Paul Janulis
:ultracool
