posted on April 21, 2003 04:40:01 PM new
LOL...kraftdinner,
Time and history have already proved them to be true and correct.
I have no desire to provide him with more links and another chance to accuse me of wasting his time with what he perceives as smokescreen stories. It's as if he is telling me I'm full of s!it followed by a demand to provide more.
posted on April 21, 2003 05:12:06 PM new
Twelvepole, yes 122 Americans were killed, I believe she, Helen I mean, said THOUSANDS killed, she meant Iraqis.
Helen, did you just type the S word? Oh my gosh! YIKES EEK
Art Bell Retired! George Noory is on late night coasttocoastam.com
posted on April 21, 2003 05:49:36 PM new
fern - You will learn when you ask Helen a direct question, she will avoid it at all costs. Then the suggestion comes about by supporters who suggest she's being put on 'trial'. Can't ask a direct question and expect a direct answer....without you being the accused.
----------
And I sure find it ironic that Helen won't believe, and highlights the words support why she won't believe....but check out her post where she uses Unidentified senior US military officers say covert US program during Reagan....to support her claim. It's somehow different...it's allowed for her to take the word of *unidentified* people IF it supports her so called position. What a joke......
posted on April 21, 2003 06:00:28 PM new
This is not information for ferncrest or Linda...just though others might be interested.
EXCERPT...
Newsweek
September 23, 2002
How Saddam Happened
America helped make a monster. What to do with him--and what happens
after he's gone--has haunted us for a quarter century.
Author: Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas
With Mark Hosenball, Roy Gutman and John Barry
Section: National Affairs
Page: 34
Estimated printed pages: 12
American officials have known that Saddam was a psychopath ever since he became the country's de facto ruler in the early 1970s. One of Saddam's early acts after he took the title of president in 1979 was to videotape a session of his party's congress, during which he personally ordered several members executed on the spot. The message, carefully conveyed to the Arab press, was not that these men were executed for plotting against Saddam, but rather for thinking about plotting against him. From the beginning, U.S. officials worried about Saddam's taste for nasty weaponry; indeed, at their meeting in 1983, Rumsfeld warned that Saddam's use of chemical weapons might "inhibit" American assistance. But top officials in the Reagan administration saw Saddam as a useful surrogate. By going to war with Iran, he could bleed the radical mullahs who had seized control of Iran from the pro-American shah. Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar Sadat, capable of making Iraq into a modern secular state, just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his assassination in 1981.
But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's "human wave attacks" threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand. After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for "video surveillance applications"; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacteria cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.
The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces. There was only token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the Kurds, records Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Ali Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds. "Who is going to say anything?" he asks. "The international community? F-- them!"
The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.
Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests. But Saddam's megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In 1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam gained the world's attention by threatening "to burn Israel to the ground." At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
posted on April 21, 2003 06:14:05 PM new
Published on Sunday, September 8, 2002 by the Sunday Herald (Scotland)
How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them
by Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot
Excerpt..
THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defense Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.
The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.
posted on April 21, 2003 06:15:12 PM new
Could someone explain to me WHY the Iraqis would destroy the weapons after they were absolutely sure they were going to be invaded and had no reason to do so to spare themselves? It was too late. What possible benefit would they get from destroying them at the last minute while Saddam was still in power? It does not seem like something he would do.
posted on April 21, 2003 06:50:45 PM new
I know this one. I've heard it quite a few times Helen
For quite awhile the U.S. gov't has 'owned' Saddam. The U.S. put him in power. (Special Ops helped him assasinate the, then dictator, and 'caused' the coup)
The U.S. tells him what and when to do things (gas the people etc )
The U.S. told him when to invade Kuwait. And that we would have to beat his army back, of course. (first Gulf war)
12 years later the U.S. told him to have his army 'not fight back' just a little here and there to make it look real. (present Iraq war)
He is off at an undisclosed luxury island, and being taken care of nicely.
We go in and plant all WMD's, maybe slap some Made in France, Germany, China, or Russia stickers on them, and we've got those guys under control. Then we make another Israel/Democracy type government with hired Iraqis that the Pentagon places there.
That is just the 'Readers Digest' Super Condensed version
Art Bell Retired! George Noory is on late night coasttocoastam.com
posted on April 21, 2003 06:54:52 PM new
ROFLMHO This is not information for Linda You're a card Helen.....okay I kept my eyes closed and didn't read your posts.
Did you say something nice about the country you enjoy living in, for a change?????
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gravid....I'm still buying the reported story about the 'sightings' [still unverified] of many 18 wheelers transporting 'something' out of Iraq a month or two prior to our 'taking over'. Haven't heard anymore about that though....so who knows.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 21, 2003 06:58:07 PM new
NTS - Now, THAT she'll buy. LOL
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 21, 2003 07:07:03 PM new
ROFLMHO - If I ever do see you post something postive about our country...I'll probably have a stroke. Does that give you any encouragement?
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 21, 2003 08:46:19 PM new
I appreciate your viewpoint and support, Linda and others.
helen's references repeatedly point back to what I posted about private companies supplying Iraq with bio/chem materials.
The Commerce Department handles international shipments of all types, hence the availability of documentation on the items sent to Iraq.
The materials were not sent to Iraq for weapons programs, folks, although some would have you believe that's the case.
helen's sources also quote Scott Ritter as saying 90-95% of all known Iraqi WoMD were destroyed by the U.N. and "He believes the remainder were probably used or destroyed during 'the ravages of the Gulf War'." That flies in the face of what Hans Blix told the UN Security council, as noted in Resolution 1441.
As to being insulting, helen, take it as you like - or try providing credible references.
posted on April 21, 2003 09:10:26 PM new
ferncrest
I have confidence that most people here have an ability to read, recognize credible sources and determine the truth. As I pointed out, I posted the information not for you but for other people who might be interested.
posted on April 22, 2003 12:56:40 AM new
Linda, As long as we seek to improve on/increase our ethical standards, we’re on the right path.
You seem to always push for a limitation on moral restraints upon any US action, ‘it’s good for USA & that’s that’. You’re on a down slide toward an immoral new century.
Doesn’t your regime do anything wrong in your eyes.
You seem to think that any ‘ills’ on US’ part are ‘mistakes’ and any ‘ills’ from other countries are ‘evil.
Look at the standard of living of all Americans and accept the inferior standards of the lowest classes and then think how to improve that, rather than praising any and all US actions.
But I guess that ‘conservative’ also means, wanting things to stay as they are.
If we always followed your quote, then we’d never improve on anything, including a stink if we were sitting in it.
“The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin”
The war is over, and people are still looking for a motive.
posted on April 22, 2003 05:24:44 AM newLook at the standard of living of all Americans and accept the inferior standards of the lowest classes and then think how to improve that, rather than praising any and all US actions.
austbounty - You, an Aussie, offer me advise and tell me not to praise my country? Have you gone mad, sir? That's like suggesting a Mother not praise her young. I'll always praise my country, I love it!!! Wouldn't live anywhere else. Proud To Be An American....
Standard of living: That's what I most like about Capitalism and the opportunities we American's can/do enjoy. Those who are motivated do achieve. Everyone has an equal chance to achieve. Those who choose not to take advantage of what our system offers only have themselves to blame.
It's not because they didn't have the same opportunities.
"The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin"
Austbounty that's called 'looking for the positive' in life. Looking for the good in people. Appreciating life and freedom because they both can be taken away so quickly. Sometimes I think that's why so many become depressed....need to rely on mood altering drugs.....because they only look at, focus only on, everything negative in the world, in their lives. They give up..lose hope....when there are so many things in life to be thankful for and appreciative of.
The war is over, and people are still looking for a motive. Only the one's that aren't 'quick' learners. The other's 'got it' a long time ago.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind;
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,—
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
posted on April 22, 2003 10:28:22 AM new
You have to use words from a poet who died in 1744 to try and make a point, Helen?
He also said: "To err is human, to forgive divine."
[i]Essay on Criticism, Part ii, Line 325[i]
I forgive you Helen
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 22, 2003 11:08:13 AM newSo? I asked the question: Do you need to quote words from a poet in order to make a point.
Just seems odd to me that while conversing one goes around quoting 260 year old verses. Most people don't use that method to communicate with others. Like, in person, when one person makes a statement, the other doesn't normally come out with a quote from a famous poet.....they speak their own words. But hey....to each his/her own.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 22, 2003 11:33:11 AM new
She does have a point Helen. You're allowed to write poems at the Round Table... not share them, as you have done.
posted on April 22, 2003 11:53:11 AM new
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
The other's 'got it' a long time ago.