IP: Moscow Times: A Bit of History of US/Middle East Despot relationships

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 20:26:30 -0700
> From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ultradevices com>
>
> http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/10/19/107.html
>
> War & Terrorism
> Chris Floyd: 'Idiot wind'
> Posted on Saturday, October 20 @ 09:43:45 EDT
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> By Chris Floyd, Moscow Times
>
> Anthrax is riding the autumn winds in America. Where does it come from?
>
> Some say from bin Laden's terrorists - although for people who can murder
> 7,000 victims in a matter of minutes, this piecemeal parceling out of spores
> seems a bit on the retail side. Then again, why expect consistency from such
> disordered minds? Others say it's homegrown cranks - some of those
> right-wing "Heartland" militants who dabble in toxins and have been
> celebrating Sept. 11 as a blow against the cities they hate most, or the
> "Army of God" anti-abortion terrorists who have used similar postal tactics
> to spread the Lord's word in the form of deadly chemicals.
>
>
>
> But savvy White House hardliners increasingly point the finger at Saddam
> Hussein. "There's no question that the leader of Iraq is an evil man," one
> hardliner said last week. "After all, he gassed his own people. We know he's
> been developing weapons of mass destruction."
>
> Thus George W. Bush fires his first shot across Baghdad's bow, warming up
> the homefolks for the big grudge match ahead - "Gulf War II: The Empire
> Strikes Back." Of course, there is no denying the accuracy of Bush's
> declaration - but even here, right-wing white man speak with forked tongue.
>
> For it's certainly true that the Iraqi despot gassed his own people. And
> it's equally true that for 20 years he's been developing weapons of mass
> destruction. But what Bush's statement deftly elides is the fact that
> Hussein's development and use of these weapons was enthusiastically abetted
> and countenanced by a previous occupant of the Oval Office named - George
> Bush.
>
> For years, Pa Bush and the affable corporate pitchman Ronald Reagan shoveled
> money, weapons and "dual-use" technology at Hussein - ignoring direct
> warnings from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department and others that
> the dictator was using this technology to develop ballistic missile
> capabilities and augment his arsenal of unconventional weapons. Some of the
> versatile materials sent to Iraq with the OK of the Reagan and Bush
> administrations include the chemical agents for botulism, tetanus, West Nile
> Fever and - surprise, surprise! - anthrax.
>
> The atrocity that Bush Junior mentioned last week occurred in March 1988,
> when Hussein murdered an estimated 4,000 Iraqi Kurds with poison gas. This
> was carried out with helicopters purchased from the United States - another
> example of "dual-use technology" in action. The next year, with Pa firmly in
> the Oval cockpit, the CIA informed the White House that Iraq was greatly
> accelerating its secret nuclear program - and had become the world's leading
> producer of chemical weapons.
>
> So what did Pa do? Why, he signed a National Security Directive ordering
> even closer ties to the poisoner. He also overrode his own Cabinet to force
> through $1 billion in agricultural credits to Hussein - a godsend for the
> cash-strapped tyrant, after international banks had stopped giving him
> loans. Once again, Bush was shown evidence that the aid was being diverted
> to military uses - but Pa had faith in his old ally. There was too much oil
> and backdoor money binding the two leaders together: an alliance sealed with
> the blood of Hussein's many victims. No need to worry. By the summer of
> 1990, Hussein was clearly gunning for Kuwait, and openly threatening to
> "burn half of Israel" with his biochemical weapons. But Pa was indulgent
> with his frisky protege: in the two weeks before the invasion of Kuwait,
> Bush approved the sale of an additional $4.8 million in "dual-use"
> technology to factories identified by the CIA as linchpins of Hussein's
> illicit nuclear and biochemical programs. The day before Saddam sent his
> tanks across the border, Pa obligingly sold him more than $600 million worth
> of advanced communication technology.
>
> Then came the war - and the messy divorce of the Bush-Hussein union.
>
> Nowadays, apologists for Bush's prolonged appeasement of the bloodthirsty
> megalomaniac like to say that he was simply practicing realpolitik:
> supporting Hussein in order to thwart Iran - who was America's designated
> "Great Satan" at the time. Hussein, say the apologists, was a bulwark
> against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism; by wooing him, Bush could
> prevent Islamic extremists from becoming powerful enough to attack the
> United States.
>
> That certainly was an effective strategy, wasn't it?
>
> Now another George Bush has launched another war against former allies in
> the volatile region, with the same kind of secret deals and wink-wink
> mollycoddling of despotisms and kleptocracies from Central Asia to the
> Persian Gulf. Is he, like his father before him, also sending dangerous
> chemicals and missile components to budding maniacs he finds useful? What
> form will the inevitable blowback take next time? How many more rough beasts
> are even now slouching toward Bethlehem to be born?
>
> The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind - along with all those anthrax
> spores.
>
> Negative Capability
>
> In recent weeks, many readers have taken this column to task for its
> "negativity," for "tearing down our leaders" without offering any "positive"
> alternatives. "What would you do?" is the steady refrain.
>
> We've always believed that our readers are intelligent enough to perceive
> the moral assumptions driving the column without being hit over the head
> with them. But perhaps in these murky times, one must be clearer about such
> things. So, just this once, we will indulge the scolders by setting out,
> briefly, some personal parameters.
>
> In Jerusalem, in the generation before Jesus of Nazareth, the greatest
> teacher of the age was Rabbi Hillel, the renowned Pharisee. One day, a
> mocker came to him and sneered: "If you can teach me the whole of the Law
> while standing on one leg, then I will follow your Way." Rabbi Hillel
> answered and said: "Do not do to others what you don't want them to do to
> you. That is the whole of the Law; the rest is commentary. Go, and study."
>
> Many years later, in Russia, a man named Solzhenitsyn harrowed the hell we
> make on earth and distilled a harsh wisdom into these stern lines: "The
> wolfhound is right; the cannibal is wrong."
>
> That just about covers it.
>
> ANNOTATIONS
>
> "Reaping the Whirlwind," Intelligence Report, Winter 2001
>
> "The Terror At Home," Salon.com, Feb. 20,1998
>
> "Abortion Rights Group Gets Suspicious Letters," Reuters, Oct. 15,
> 2001-10-17
>
> "Bush Secret Effort Helped Iraq Build Its War Machine," (Archives) Los
> Angeles Times, Feb. 23 1992
>
> "Bush Had Long History of Support for Iraq Aid," (Archives) Los Angeles
> Times, Feb. 24, 1992
>
> "US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq,"
> United States Senate Report, May 25, 1994
>
> "The Making of Mr. Bush's War," Presidential Studies Quarterly, Summer 1996
>
> "In Uzbekistan, Brutal Rule Suppresses Muslims," Boston Globe, October 16,
> 2001
>
> Reprinted from The Moscow Times:
> http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/10/19/107.html


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