From: brian@coombs.anu.edu.au (Brian)
Subject: Re: Bush Secretly Aided Saddam Until August 1990
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date:  9 Apr 92 22:16:47 GMT

briand@anasaz (Brian Douglass) writes:

>In article <brian.702527367@coombs> brian@coombs.anu.edu.au (Brian) writes:
>>mathon@tss.com (John D. Mathon (593-0923)) writes:
>>
>>>>dual use was designed as a way of evading guidelines when the
>>>>government WANTS to allow a country to purchase weapons.  Don't believe
>>>>me?  Ask the Pentagon.  They argued AGAINST allowing the exports for
>>>>precisely that reason, but heavy corporate lobbying got the Commerce
>>>>Dept to overrule these arguments and permit the exports.
>>
>>>The exports of wheat and commercial helicopters.  This could be justified
>>>on any number of grounds including helping farmers.  Why should the US
>>>not ship wheat to Iraq.  It is in Americas interest to get those sales.
>>
>>	Oh, well, if you want to take it to the bottom line Mr.Mathon,
>>thats fine.  However, don't continue to claim then that the US is _not_
>>a friend of dictators, OK?

>I wouldn't say were a "friend" of dictators.  Rather a user of dictators.
>It may seem semantic but there is a big difference.  A friend you expect to
>behave certain ways to you all the time, versus someone you use you expect
>them to act a certain way only on certain things.  Otherwise you don't know
>(or don't care) what they'll do.

	Perhaps your definition is closer than mine.  However, I think when
I'm using the word "friend" I am referring not to someone who is a life-long
"mate" (or in USspeak "buddy"), but rather someone who tolerates their worst
excesses and continues to have cordial relations with those sorts of regimes.
Something I think you'd agree the US is famous for.

>>>Iraq is going to buy the wheat anyways, why not get it from the US.  
>>
>>	Because people like yourself like to attempt to paint the US as
>>being somehow morally "superior" to people like Saddam, yet it seems
>>that all you really desire is a chance to make a quick dollar....

>Not morally superior, just more realistic.  Utopia has not arrived on Earth yet
>it sometimes you still have to fight fire with fire.

	No one is suggesting that we yet have a utopia.  What I am talking
about is the continual mouthings by successive US Presidents each time they
justify to the world and perhaps even more importantly their domestic voters,
of just how much more morally "superior" the US is WRT to what ever other
country they have just decided to bomb/blow up/overthrow a government in/etc.
	You do remember such phrases as, "We did it to protect democracy"
"We had to protect freedom" "The Evil Empire" "Communist Conspiracy to
Pollute Our Precious Bodily Fluids"?

>>>I can fully justify sales of wheat to almost anybody when Europe will
>>>sell them it anyways, why should the US not sell these people wheat?
>>
>>	Because the US claims continually that its not supporting people like
>>Saddam when its obvious that it is.......

>We've never "supported" Saddam--it was the Soviet Union that did
>that--instead we've contributed to him.  

	Err, you know, thats a funny definition of "support".
Providing him with material aid, military intelligence and political support
all adds up, in my book, to "support".  Admittedly, its not as much as the
USSR was doing, but its still "support".   Your attempt to obsfucate doesn't
become you.

>					He would have gotten what he
>wanted, whether it was from us or someone else.  So, instead of cutting off
>our nose to spite our face, we sell him stuff to make money instead of our
>competitors, as well as possibly gain some influence with him.  Not morally
>pristine, but the world is still a rough and tumble place where the weak
>and meak get eaten alive.

	Who's talking about being "weak and meak"?  I'm talking about actually
being as strong morally as your presidents have claimed down the years they
are.  Instead we see vacillating presidents inconsistently saying one thing
about freedom and doing another about it by propping up these unsavoury
regimes.
	Surely, if as the West was want to, it was "morally superior" to
communism, then sinking to the same level as the communists was destroying
its own moral superiority?  Surely if capitalism and liberal democracy is
so much better than communist totalitarianism, then it should have been able
to attract supporters to its cause without having to rely upon support from
oppressive and destructive regimes of the style it supported so often in the
third world?

>>>Selling Iraq was the correct policy yesterday and when they comply with
>>>UN sanctions, selling wheat will be OK in the future EVEN if Saddam
>>>is still in power or some other scumbag is in power.  Is this clear!!!
>>
>>	Nope, because selling wheat to "scumbags" like Saddam only helps
>>to make sure that they remain in power Mr.Mathon.  So much for the US 
>>being interested in "self-determination" and "democracy/freedom/justice"
>>around the world when it supports someone like Saddam.

>It wasn't a choice between Saddam and "democracy/freedom/justice".  It was
>a choice between Saddam and the Ayatollah Khomeni.  

	No, it was a choice between two _perceptions_ of the two (and 
considering that at least one of them was a creation of US policies in
the 1950's, what can one expect?).

>							Given that neither
>these guys you'd want to take out your daughter, our "friends" in the area
>said Saddam was a blusterer that they could always buy off.  The Ayatollah
>on the other hand was considered beyond reason.  

	Really?  Is that why we saw your President and his minion Ollie North
go cap in hand to talk to him?

>						So, better to deal with
>Saddam and let him be a buffer to Iran than "take the moral high ground"
>and watch Islamic Fundamentalism sweep through the Arabian Penninsula.
>Something that would have really thrown the world into a tizzy.

	That explains what was happening up until late 1988.  What was the
excuse for continuing to support Saddam after that until he invaded Kuwait?

>Saddam wasn't the US friend.  He was a tool, and a minor one at that.  We
>dealt with him when it was convenient and beneficial to us.  If we hadn't
>it would have made little or no difference to his actions.  Rather, it was
>FUSSR that actually supported, and armed him to the point of being the 4th
>largest army in the world.

	You know, I really do wish you'd stop believing the propaganda put
out by your government Brian.  Iraq was _not_ by any stretch of the 
imagination the "4th largest army in the world".  It was in fact about 6th.
The world's ranking (by pure numbers in uniform)in 1990 went:

	1)	China
	2)	USSR
	3)	USA
	4)	India
	5)	Iran
	6)	Iraq

(Source: The World's Military Balance, 1990, SPRI, Stockholm).

	In addition if the reports put out by the independent defence 
analsysts are to be believed, Iraq's military was qualifiably a long way down
the list.  The US government had to create a bogeyman to justify what it was
doing and so did so.

	By the time Desert Storm began, the Iraqi forces were in fact out
numbered by Coalition (some 350,000 Iraqis compared to 450,000 Coalition
ground forces).

>>>The US did nothing wrong in selling Saddam wheat.  NOTHING.
>>
>>	Nothing?  Is this a moral absolutist statement or a moral
>>relativist one Mr.Mathon?  If its an absolutist statement then you cannot
>>attempt to blame any other nation around the world, for anything.  If its
>>a relativist statement, then I'd suggest you actually go and do some reading
>>about what is and is not morally acceptable.

>Geo-politics doesn't know what the word "moral" is.  Before Ronald Reagan, 
>moral righteousness wasn't even part of the diplomatic vernacular.  

	Really?  Gee, I wonder what Pres. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson,
Nixon and Carter were all saying _before_ Reagan's assumption to the throne?

>								What there
>was was quid-pro-quo, influence, leverage, economic/development/military
>aid, spheres of influence, national interest.  Morality was something for
>domestic consumption, a feel good pill for the public while diplomats,
>generals and spies scrambled about trying to avoid a confrontation with the 
>USSR that would destory the planet.  

	Funny, it appeared to me going by reading of what was going on it
was in fact the USSR which was attempting to avoid a confrontation with the
US "that would destroy the planet."  If you want to go back and examine each
of the major "brushfire wars" between 1945 and 1980 (Reagan's assumption to
power), and look at how they ended, it was usually the USSR which forced the
beligerents to the negotiating table, not the US.

>					Do you think we went to the Moon
>because of some desire to better mankind?  No, it was to prove to the USSR
>our missles were so accurate we could hit any spot we wanted.  And guess
>what, it worked.  Were still here able to hold this conversation, and the USSR
>is gone.  It wasn't pretty, but war, be it hot or cold is never pretty.
>And morality just doesn't have much place in war.  (It's humanity that
>does, but that's a different issue.)

	Its amazing how you sound just like a fascist Brian, it really is.
"The end justifies the means".  Its also how interesting you can deny some
2,000 years of efforts by philisophers to produce a morality of war, a morality
which is by civilised nations at least, adhered to as much as possible.  Even
the Soviet Union has adhered to such concepts.

>>>Second, most of the other nations who sold Saddam real weapons are
>>>not responsible for his use of those weapons.  Iraq must take full
>>>blame for using the weapons.  Even though Italy, West Germany and
>>>France sold him billions in weapons and even though Russia sold him
>>>billions in weapons, they are not responsible for his acts as far as
>>>I see.
>>
>>	They are as responsible as the US is Mr.Mathon and no one is attempting
>>to excuse them (except in your imagination).  All this charge and counter-
>>charge against the US is simply an effort to make Washington accept the blame
>>that belongs to it, thats all.

>Hardly.  We did little to help Saddam's war effort until it started looking
>real bad for Saddam.  Then the US allowed BDM corporation (a military
>think-tank) to consult to Iraq.  It was about a year later that the
>Repulican Guards rolled through Iranian defenses forcing an armistice
>between the two nations.  Our support didn't make Saddam into the aggressor
>he became.  

	No one is claiming that it did.  What is being claimed is that it
_helped" make Saddam into the aggressor he became".  Again, instead of assuming
that we are only talking about relative positions, please start thinking as
this being solely the US government on trial, not the whole bloody world.

>		Look to the rest of the world for that.  Our support was to
>make sure the Shi'ites didn't win, and given that, to end the conflict.  I
>think there is a big difference in the actions of the US and the USSR in
>regards to Iraq.

	Not really.  Both used Iraq for similar purposes.  The difference was
that Iraq had to pay in hard, cold cash, to the USSR.  The US gave them 
things instead.


--
Brian Ross__________________________________________________________________
	"If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it
will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people
suppose that it is always wrong."______________________________J.K.Galbraith
Newsgroups: alt.desert-storm