Anonymous Report This Comment
Date: April 18, 2005 03:17AM

Saddam did love his gas, I'll bet another kind of gas was bad down in his spider hole..

anonymous Report This Comment
Date: April 18, 2005 09:05AM

Ironic that the US sold him the gas, wasn't it.

duane Report This Comment
Date: April 18, 2005 09:31AM

Yes it is I guess without it he would have had to do it the way he did some of the others round them up march them to the b`order` into a hole and butcher them there.Try to understand this the gas is not the problem its Sadam.To many people try to play it off that the gas is what was bad,it was,but not as bad as Sadam he murdered millions more without the gas.The anti-war people would try anything to pawn this off that he was our friend but only by being "the enemy of my enemy".

anonymous Report This Comment
Date: April 18, 2005 09:36AM

You are correct duane, however the subtler point that "the gas" makes, is that the US was a buddy to Saddam, and facilitated his regime. They could have made it plenty hard for him to cope, but they liked the fact that we could sell him weapons and he would fight Iran. Kept him distracted so he wouldn't attack Israel - they had enough problems at the time. There is no moral high-ground. The point was that people in power did what they did for two reasons (1) ensure continuation of power, and (2) make more money. To say the US cares about people today, that we are doing something different today than yesterday, is absurd. The rich still plot their wars, using the rest of us, to ensure their wealth. "Left" "Right"... a farce.

strife Report This Comment
Date: April 20, 2005 03:45PM

The U.S. and Saddam never were "buddies", 1485. Think about the situation that the U.S. was in at that moment.

The biggest event in our recent memory was the Iran hostage crisis, making Iran the second big name on our hit list (after the Soviet Union). We needed to somehow keep Iran occupied and take pressure off of our Israeli allies.

Luckily for us, Saddam is a greedy little bastard and decided to incite war with Iran, ensuring that Iran would be kept busy. The problem was that at the time, Saddam was destined to lose and didn't know it. His arrogance led him to believe he could beat the much more powerful (though not as organized) Iranian nation. He could not, but our weapons, including chemical and biological ones, helped. Even with them all he could do was bring it to a draw.

Saddam was seen as unholy by the Iranians, so much so that they declared Jihad on Iraq. They considered it a holy duty to kill him. One problem with that is how often the view of what is holy can be skewed, especially in the Muslim world.

Saddam mistook the U.S. for being his buddy, and that's why he thought he could get away with invading Kuwait... whoops!

The truth is that Saddam was the underdog, so we helped. After his war with Iran was done he continued to militarize until he had the 4th largest standing army (the US being the 3rd) with plenty of nice equipment and weapons primarily bought from the Russians, French, Germans, and Chinese, not the Americans.

You look at the weapons that were used against us in Operation Iraqi Freedom, you'd notice plenty of made in Russia/France/Germany stickers on them. For instance, they had been sold several powerful shoulder launched rockets that were designed by the Russians to take out the M1 A2 Abrams Tank despite it's reactive armor, that weren't being made until after the embargo. If anybody was caught with their hand in the cookie jar, it sure wasn't the U.S.

Besides, the point of the picture is how the Kurds were suffering and literally at war with Saddam. Our acts in Iraq are more humanitarian than anybody gives credit for. It's not only giving freedom to the average Iraqi, but a long oppressed group that has been wronged at a level that's comparable to the Jews or the American Indians.

And you take this whole class warfare thing way too seriously. If the rich hold so much power and a pointless lust to screw the rest of us, why are they forced to pay a high percentage in taxes than the average American? The top 20% wage earners pay 80% of the taxes. There are problems with corruption, but they are greatly exaggerated and taken as fact. The whole corporate world isn't one big Enron.

duane Report This Comment
Date: April 21, 2005 02:07AM

Ive been mistaken Ive had the habbit of calling some of the people on this site communists the proper term was dupe.My bad.

aDCBeast Report This Comment
Date: June 16, 2006 08:14AM


Iran love their Russian made gas as well. The DIA proved the Kurds were killed by the Iranians.