[ExI] The Death Toll Imbalance in the Mideast War
painlord2k at libero.it
painlord2k at libero.it
Thu Jun 11 17:32:20 UTC 2009
Il 11/06/2009 10.24, BillK ha scritto:
> On 6/11/09, John Grigg wrote:
>> This is where you and I really part ways. A people can be *held
>> hostage* by their own government and utterly terrorized. And in
>> such cases they need to be freed! If not for the cost in lives
>> and money, I would be very much for an invasion of North Korea. As
>> the world scratches their head in trying to appease the dictator
>> there, so many of his subjects starve or are imprisoned and
>> killed.
>> We sadly cannot invade everyone, everywhere. ; )
> I think Stathis is making the point that many dictatorships were
> created or massively supported by the US under the foreign policy
> that at least dictators were better than communist supporters.
> Supported dictators were, of course, supposed to do as they were
> told by US advisors. Some rebelled and had to be dealt with.
This could be.
But Saddam was never a US supported dictator.
It was a national-socialist dictator supported by USSR mainly.
Iraq was supported by the USSR after the killings of the royal family.
The support continued after Saddam take power in the 1978 and invaded
Iran from September 1980 to August 1988.
Interestingly I just found this allegation on the Wikipedia:
> In a secret 1981 memo summing up a trip to the Middle East,
> then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig wrote: "It was also
> interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green
> light to launch the war against Iran through Prince Fahd" of
> Jordan."[33] U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski met
> with Saddam Hussein in July 1980 in Amman, Jordan, to discuss joint
> efforts to oppose Iran, Kenneth R. Timmerman and former Iranian
> President Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr. According to Saddam Hussein
> biographer Said Aburish however, at the Amman meeting Saddam Hussein
> met with three CIA agents, not Brzezinski personally.
President Carter was and is a Republican? :-)
> Former Carter official Gary Sick denies that Washington directly
> encouraged Iraq's attack, but instead let "Saddam assume there was a
> U.S. green light because there was no explicit red light."[34]
Ante-litteram Obamian rhetoric? Or classical Democratic rhetoric?
This would also explain because he believed Bush sr. gave him a green
light to invade Kuwait when the ambassador of the US tell him the
"confine disputes" with Kuwait were matters between Iraq and Kuwait and
the US would not interfere.
Mistakes, misunderstanding abound in history.
But returning to the point of Saddam ties with US.
Can we compute "support" on how many weapons were sold to Iraq?
This could place the US very low in the list, USSR, Europe countries and
east Asia countries would come before.
Iraq tanks were sold by USSR, the same for Iraq air plane; France sold
air plane and missiles (and nuclear technology); Germany sold the
technology to produce fertilizers and nerve gas and so on.
> Imported weapons to Iraq (IRQ) in 1973-2002
> Country $MM USD 1990 % Total
> USSR 25145 57.26
> France 5595 12.74
> China 5192 11.82
> Czechoslovakia 2880 06.56
> Poland 1681 3.83
> Brazil 724 1.65
> Egypt 568 1.29
> Romania 524 1.19
> Denmark 226 0.51
> Libya 200 0.46
> USA 200 0.46
> South Africa 192 0.44
> Austria 190 0.43
> Switzerland 151 0.34
> Yugoslavia 107 0.24
> Germany (FRG) 84 0.19
> Italy 84 0.19
> UK 79 0.18
> Hungary 30 0.07
> Spain 29 0.07
> East Germany (GDR) 25 0.06
> Canada 7 0.02
> Jordan 2 0.005
> Total 43915 100.0
Why no one ever blame Qadaffi for his support to Saddam during the
Iran-Iraq war? He is on par of the US for weapons sold to Iraq.
Mirco
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