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CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran (2013)
- djsumdog 9y agoThis will probably get flagged as being non tech, but yea. Duh. I've been reading The Dictators Handbook recently and it does a good job of explaining this situation. You help those that will keep you in power and give you the resources you want. Every American president will help regimes who will give them support and money, so they can pay their supporters (all the people at the top in DC) and then they use what's left over on the people. Democracies tend to spend more on people ideas, because there's a larger set of replaceable (voters) in the selectorate. It doesn't matter if a leader is doing what is good or not good for the people. The chief goal of a leader is to get in power and stay in power. They have to pay off all their supports, or keys to power. If that involves things that are unsavory. You censor it. In democracies, you just make sure your supporters include the propaganda (a.k.a news) agencies. If a leader does something that helps the people, like in Libya where they gave people free education, free power, housing subsidies, gas subsidies; but do so at the expense of their supporters (not playing ball with America in the oil trade), then the leaders get take out, given fake trials, killed and the propaganda networks demonize them. It's not hard to demonize them, because all leaders must be corrupt to get into power; so you can always find something to speak to that corruption. Lest we forget that Obama gave America over to the health care industry, killed thousands with predator drones and was the first president to spend every day in office at war.
- ejstronge 9y ago> Obama gave America over to the health care industry This is disingenuous at best - health care costs have and will continue to grow every year. At least for its first few years, the ACA decreased the growth of health care spending. We'll see how it goes now that it's being played around with.
- malvosenior 9y agoDo you live in the US? My insurance now costs me more than half of my mortgage. Prior to the ACA it was about half of that.
- ejstronge 9y agoI do live in the US. The growth figures relate to population-level metrics. At the level of the individual, other factors are also at play, like the willingness of one's employer to subsidize health insurance. EDIT: a reference - https://wire.ama-assn.org/practice-management/health-care-spending-growth-rate-its-highest-2007 https://wire.ama-assn.org/practice-management/health-care-sp...
- monocasa 9y agoPart of the ACA was capping profit percentages, which just incentivises insurance companies to increase revenue and spending to increase real profits year after year.
- djsumdog 9y agoI don't think that's true. I worked in Health Insurance for three years during the height of the ACA debates. I had high hopes for the ACA, but most of the positive provisions where crippled and the ACA varies heavily from state to state. Had everyone been forced to buy from the marketpalce, we would have seen a more significant difference. After living outside the US and returning, I wrote about this last year: https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-the-unaffordable-care-act/ https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-...
- ejstronge 9y agoI took a look at your article - what points in my claim (i.e., annual health care cost growth decreased in the first years of the ACA compared to expectations) do you find incorrect? I'm happy to find primary references if you'd like. EDIT: As I said before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933813), an individual's health care costs depend most strongly on personal factors like employer contributions.
- alexandercrohde 9y agoWhat I dislike about this attitude is it's reductionist. No: not "Duh." Here in America we have a very confusing system, and no not everything is explained by self interest. For example: George Washington voluntarily turning down more power. Yes, self interest is a large player in people's choices, larger than they publicly admit, and maybe larger than any other factor. But jumping from that to helping a foreign dictator use chemical weapons is not a "duh."
- chiefalchemist 9y agoTrue. "Duh" might be heavy handed. But this is certainly no surprise. Let's not forget we (read: CIA, I believe) trained UBL & Co to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. And then what happened. And then of course, there's are previous antics in Iran. That is, we have a history there, and it's not pretty. I'm not being troll-y, but I have to ask: What do you find confusing about the American system (that a quick read of history doesn't explain)?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mistermann 9y agoPersonally, I think "duh" is the perfect sentiment for this. What governments, ours and "corrupt" ones, are really doing behind closed doors vs what we're told by our media is vastly different. The hysterics over the latest Syria gassing and the Russian hackers epidemic are just the latest examples in a long line of using the media to manipulate public opinion and keep people fighting among themselves so they never find out what's really going on. And those that do peek behind the curtains, brand them conspiracy theorists. Works like a charm.
- alexandercrohde 9y agoI hear this theory a lot. And it's not paranoid, but it's also not fruitful without substantiation. You need to develop your theory and gather some evidence. How is the government controlling media? Which media? Why are there no whistleblowers? What's your evidence? Obviously the US government isn't censoring the internet. In the meantime, I fear you're actually making people more skeptical of you by jumping to conclusions
- Clubber 9y ago>Lest we forget that Obama gave America over to the health care industry, killed thousands with predator drones and was the first president to spend every day in office at war. I believe LBJ spent every day of his presidency at war as well.
- cafard 9y agoYou could say that, but the level of involvement in the "advisory period" of the Vietnam War must have been matched in various Caribbean ventures in the early 20th Century. I suppose that you might as well count Lincoln, for secession preceded his inauguration.
- Clubber 9y agoSecession wasn't the official start of the war, I would say it was Sumter, which happened shortly after Lincoln took office. I was going to mention Lincoln, but he was in office during Sumter and when he died, Lee had already surrendered the confederate army. It's fairly fuzzy too because there were battles after the surrender.
- ska 9y agoFor some reasonable values of "at war", the US has inhabited it for nearly its entire history - making this sort of distinction moot.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago> "Lest we forget that Obama gave America over to the health care industry, killed thousands with predator drones and was the first president to spend every day in office at war." He also, for all intents and purposes, pardoned Wall Street (for crashing the world economy, and - per estimates by economists - killing thousands). But he, we are told, was a great president. Mainly based on words (e.g., "That's not who we are...") and complete disregard for his actions.
- f4rker 9y agoThis has been known for some time now
- singularity2001 9y agoTangential: with 107 blocked scripts this site sets a privacy intrusion record; and a nice collection of sites to set to "untrusted"
- DoctorOetker 9y agowhat kind of blocker do you use? ABP is showing me 0...
- sp332 9y agoPrivacy Badger flagged 9. Bing, Google, Facebook, bounceexchange, scorecardresearch.
- lightedman 9y agoABP is old and busted and bought-out. ublock Origin is one of the new hotness plugins you need.
- uoaei 9y agoABP is pretty widely considered compromised, i.e., sold out. Switch to uBlock Matrix (or uBlock Origin for a drop-in replacement for ABP).
- nickthegreek 9y agoWhat is the difference between Matrix and Origin?
- ublime 9y agoParalleles to Saudi Arabia being armed by the US in the war on Yemen and resulting famine. Or US white phospherus being used in Lebanon by Israel.
- montyf 9y agoOr the US using Agent Orange and inflicting shocking health effects to millions of Vietnamese. Hiroshima/Nagasaki pale in comparison.
- abandonliberty 9y agoThis is a bit different - the health effects were not the intended outcome.
- wybiral 9y agoOr Russia supporting Assad.
- moondowner 9y agoReminded me of... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/04/how-britain-and-us-abandoned-srebrenica-massacre-1995 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/04/how-britain-an...
- coldtea 9y agoOf course they did. Anybody with the tiny knowledge of 20th century history wouldn't doubt that for a minute -- or believe BS sources like the NYT and other parrots of official policy that only print such stuff decades after, when it doesn't matter anymore.
- JackFr 9y agoAnd yet somehow we still hear that "Bush lied!" about WMD's.
- sp332 9y agoThe chemical weapons were destroyed well before Bush claimed that WMD's were a good justification for invading.
- wybiral 9y agoHow does that timeline work?
- sp332 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr... Iraq actively researched and later employed weapons of mass destruction from 1962 to 1991, when it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs.
- krapp 9y agoHe did lie. He lied anyway. Bush implied that Iraqi intelligence was involved in 9/11, in order to conflate the case for war with Iraq with the justification for war in Afghanistan. He stated that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," a claim based on forged documents. Cheney even stated that the administration was going to invade Iraq regardless of the evidence. It's clear they weren't intending to make a case for war in good faith so much as spin the public by any means they could.
- flexie 9y agoSo while Bush junior invaded Iraq and overturned Saddam Hussein because he wrongly thought they had weapons of mass destruction, his father, Bush senior, rightly thought so 13 years earlier but still decided to help Saddam Hussein.
- UncleEntity 9y agoYou know Bush Sr. also invaded Iraq which very few people would consider to be "helping" Saddam Hussein, right? Also Bush Sr. was smart enough to know that occupying Iraq would be an open-ended endeavor so got them out of Kuwait and then left with some UN sanctions in place -- one of which was the destruction of WMD's which everyone knew they had. I'm of the personal opinion that Bush Jr & Co. were just looking for any flimsy excuse to dispose Saddam because he tried to assassinate his father after he was out of office. Oh, and the oil...
- gandhium 9y ago> he wrongly thought they had weapons of mass destruction They _had_ WMDs, and quite a lot of them. Not on the scale they've believed, though.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- drtyolmck 9y agoI thought that was common knowledge
- josefresco 9y agoIt's certainly been in a few books I've ready which weren't published recently. I think this was just dug up (for clicks) because of the Syria situation.
- vermontdevil 9y agoAnd yet we invaded the same country. Heck of allies we are.
- wybiral 9y agoBasically our intelligence agencies were starting to receive evidence that suggest they were using gas around the same time that we had pre-existing deals in place to support them? Before you go full tin-foil-hat with this, realize that decision makers don't always trust the intelligence being given to them and changes to policy and existing agreements take time. Did we continue to stay in support of them knowing this or did we later condemn them for their use of chemical weapons?
- Lionsion 9y ago> Did we continue to stay in support of them knowing this or did we later condemn them for their use of chemical weapons? The US fought its own war against Iraq just three years after the time period this article focuses on. I'm pretty sure they were pretty roundly condemned by that point.
- adventured 9y agoConveniently, articles like this always leave out how some European nations directly and knowingly helped Saddam with his chemical weapons programs, such as Germany and the UK. It was a united effort by the West, just as the vast destruction of Syria has been. "As part of Project 922, German firms helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. One of the contributions was a £14m chlorine plant known as "Falluja 2", built by Uhde Ltd, a UK subsidiary of a German company; the plant was given financial guarantees by the UK's Export Credits Guarantee Department despite official UK recognition of a "strong possibility" the plant would be used to make mustard gas." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program https://fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.html https://fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.html
- strictnein 9y agoWhy you're getting buried is beyond me. The article headline tries to tie the US to the gassing, when it was European countries (Germany and France especially) that were actually responsible for it. Of course, why this topic hasn't been nuked is also beyond me. 100% political discussion.
- adrianmonk 9y agoMaybe because they began their comment with "conveniently". This implies the people who wrote this article have some kind of agenda. I, at least, don't know any specific reason to believe they do.
- WindowsFon4life 9y agoFrance provided Saddam with a nuclear breeder reactor. That seems to be much more dangerous than intel.
- AriaMinaei 9y agoFive of my uncles fought in that war. They've told us many stories from that time. Somehow they manage to make most of it sound funny. Like the time they had to eat hot water with stale bread and pretend it was noodle soup! - Here is your soup. Eat fast. - Sir, this is water. - Eat your soup! - But,.. - Are you disobeying your superior? Eat your soup and go easy on the noodles! Don't want any bloated soldiers in my squad! They're both smiling kindly to each other, knowing there isn't any food tonight for anyone, but they can at least pretend to enjoy a soup together. --- There was one story though that turned into a nightmare for me as a child. About the time my youngest uncle was exposed to a nerve agent. They were stationed in a temporary base far behind the frontline, when an Iraqi attack craft cuts through and drops a series of bombs. The bombs don't destroy any valuable assets in the base. The soldiers were relieved about that. They were mostly volunteers with little to no military experience. They didn't know any better. The bombs turn out to carry a nerve agent and possibly something else, the smoke of which was beginning to spread through the base. At that point in time, many people didn't even know much about chemical weapons. Perhaps because the government kept the information to keep the morale. But the news eventually spread, as Iran was crying foul to the UN, pleading the powers to stop enabling Saddam to make the chemical weapons. (European friends look very surprised and unconvinced now when they hear their governments turned a blind eye to large European corporations selling chemical technology to Saddam, knowing full well what the tech was going to be used for). The fear of chemical weapons got so widespread at some point, with pictures of victims appearing everywhere, that there are reports of people dying of heart attacks, after hearing that an explosion nearby was "chemical," even if it turns out not to be. Anyway, back to my uncle: He remembers flashes of what happened next in the base. There was chaos and confusion and crying. He remembers being ordered to lie flat on the ground and remove his clothing from the waist down. Then medics come and inject shots of Atropine to every soldier on the ground. He doesn't remember anything after that until next morning, when he wakes up, barely able to see or breathe, but being told that they've survived death. He eventually survives the whole war, comes back home, gets a job, and starts a family. In his own words, he has made a full recovery. But every few weeks, it happens that as he is leaving the house in the morning to go to work, he makes a small sneeze, after which his body "locks." Family or neighbours would carry him back home. He would be unable to move that whole day. My uncle was certainly among the lucky ones. Most who were exposed didn't have the luxury of Atropine shots or full body masks. Four years ago, I held two friends in tears when they lost their father after two decades of agonising pain. (Imagine not being able to take a fresh breath, for twenty years). --- The people that I know who fought in the war, now identify with different political factions. Some are more conservative. Some much more liberal. But one thing that unites them all, is that they're against war. Any war. Of any kind. And they share that opinion with pretty much anyone else I've ever met in my country. I know it doesn't seem that way when you watch the news, but if you made a visit and saw for yourself, you'd be surprised to learn just how anti-war this country really is.
- WindowsFon4life 9y agoSo we gave Iraq military intel, but no weapons of any sort? Iran, on the other hand, was using almost 100% American weaponry.
- Lionsion 9y agoSome other interesting facts from the article: > Also, the [CIA] noted that the Soviet Union had previously used chemical agents in Afghanistan and suffered few repercussions. > Top CIA officials ... were told ... that Iraq was about to buy equipment from Italy to help speed up production of chemical-packed artillery rounds and bombs...
- grzm 9y ago90 comments at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6275149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6275149