Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Saddam Hussein - A CIA Puppet?

Saddam Hussein - A CIA Puppet?
 
After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush's son, George
Herbert Walker Bush - father of our current President - authorized a
series of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but
also provided him with technology that assisted in his development of
chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still
possesses. Apologists for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq
War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he was just trying to
establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies,
including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International (BCCI), and the Banca Nacional del Lavoro (BNL) were
directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the U.S.
fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Colombia
Journalism Review (CJR), provided the most compelling overview of
Iraqgate that I have seen.
"ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop
"It is becoming increasingly clear," said a grave Ted Koppel, "that
George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s,
initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and
military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that
the United States ultimately had to destroy."
"Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage?"
Baker poignantly asks.
"The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind
facile imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm.
In particular, readers who do not follow the story of the Banca Nacional
del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam's arms
buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S.
history.
"Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the
S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear
to be getting any better at telling them."
"Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but
so-called dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored
ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential
civilian uses as well as military applications. We've learned that a
vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the
Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded
Kuwait.
"And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy's largest
bank, Banca Nacional del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S.
taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to
1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural
purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff
than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of
suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans
to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding
the bag for what looks like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
"In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick
Thornburgh [appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators
from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case."
"As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7,
"Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse
of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S.,
Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
While Democrat Henry Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee
during the period, stood as the lone voice in the wilderness in raising
alarms about Bush's obvious corruption, the rest of the Congress
sheepishly ignored all the signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales'
voice reportedly fell silent after his empty car was machine-gunned in a
Washington suburb in what passed for a drive-by shooting.
The CJR continues: "Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major
investigation by free-lancer Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue.
"That American troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert
decision to arm Iraq," Waas wrote, "is the most serious consequence of a
U.S. foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the
advice and consent of the American public."
The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National
Security Decision Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering
closer ties with Baghdad and paving the way for $1 billion in new aid.
The Timesí series, co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, "buried deep
in a 1991 Washington Press piece - that Secretary of State James Baker,
after meeting with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989,
intervened personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to
Iraq."
Bakerís CJR report also noted, "On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal
reported [BNL official Christopher] Drogoulís assertion that the
Director General of Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military Production
had told him, "We are all in this together. The intelligence service of
the U.S. government works very closely with the intelligence service of
the Iraqi government." Three weeks later, the Journal reported that
[Henry] Gonzales "produced a phone-book-sized packet of documents"
showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms. The documents mentioned
one "which designed parts for Iraq's howitzers and was financed through
BNL."
In the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just
miles from where several of the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one
final note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home" author William
Thomas writes, " Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19
containers of Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the
American Type Culture Collection company, located near Fort Detrick, MD,
the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare labs."
-- 
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Army's high security germ warfare labs."
E allora?  Sarebbe come dire che una compagnia con sede a Redmond e che
avesse venduto computer all'Iraq proverebbe la complicita' della
Microsoft nell'azione perche' sono della stessa citta' :))
*LOL*
-Stefano