The US justifications for the Iraq war were a pack of lies

[earth_as_one]

and anyone who still believes Iraq was invaded because of its weapons of mass destruction stockpiles, links to al Queda or humanitarian reason is an idiot.

I'll start with a post in another string by Walter

1968
The Baath Party power returns to power after a coup in July. It creates a state apparatus systematically dominated by the Baath party that enables it to remain in power for at least the next thirty years.
The Baath militia, the National Guard, crack down on demonstrations and strikes. In November, two strikers are shot dead at a vegetable oil factory near Baghdad, and three are killed on a demonstration to commemorate the Russian Revolution.
1969
The regime begins rounding up suspected communists. The guerrilla movement is defeated, with many of its members tortured to death. Aziz al-Hajj betrays them by recanting on television, subsequently becoming Iraqi ambassador to France.
The air force bombs Kurdish areas, but the military stalemate remains until the following year when Saddam Hussein negotiates an agreement with the Kurdish Democratic Party. In exchange for limited autonomy, the KDP leadership agrees to integrate its peshmerga fighters into the Iraqi army.
1974
War breaks out again in Kurdistan as the agreement with the KDP breaks down. The KDP is deprived of its traditional allies in the CP and the Soviet Union, now supporting the Baath. Instead it seeks and receives aid from the USA and the Shah of Iran. The Baathists launch napalm attacks on the Kurdish towns of Halabja and Kalalze.
1975
The Iraqi military continues bombing civilian areas in Kurdistan, killing 130 at Qala'Duza, 43 in Halabja and 29 in Galala in April.
Iraq negotiates an agreement with Iran, withdrawing help from Iranian Kurds and other anti-Shah forces in return for Iran stopping support to the Iraqi KDP. Iran takes back the military equipment it had given to the KDP, leaving the field open for the Iraqi army to conquer Kurdistan
1978
Wholesale arrests of ICP members it criticises the regime. Twelve are executed for political activity in the army. All non-Baathist political activity in the army (such as reading a political newspaper), or by former members of the armed forces is banned under sentence of death. With universal conscription, this means that all adult males are threatened with death for political activity.
1980
War breaks out between Iraq and the new Iranian regime lead by Ayatollah Khomeni. The conflict centres on border disputes and the prospect of the Islamic revolution spreading to Iraq. Iran shells the Iraqi cities of Khanaqin and Mandali; Iraq launches a bombing mission over Tehran.
1982
Popular anti-government uprising in Kurdish areas. The government decrees that deserters from the army (anyone who has gone absent without leave for more than five days) will be executed.
In the southern marsh regions, the Iraqi army launches a massive military operation with the help of heavy artillery, missiles and aircraft to flush out the thousands of deserters and their supporters in the area. Rebels do not only run away from the war, but organise sabotage actions such as blowing up an arsenal near the town of Amara. In the village of Douru armed inhabitants resist the police to prevent house-to-house searches for deserters. At Kasem in the same area armed rebels clash with the military. Villages supporting the rebels are destroyed and their inhabitants massacred.
1985
Start of the "War of the Cities" with Iran and Iraq firing missiles at each other's capitals.
1987
In May there is an uprising in the Kurdish town of Halabja led by the many deserters from the army living in the town. According to one eye witness "the governmental forces were toppled. The people had taken over and the police and army had to go into hiding, only being able to move around in tanks and armoured divisions". Hundreds of people are killed when the rebellion is crushed.
1988
Armed deserters take over the town of Sirwan (near Halabja). The Iraqi air force destroys the town with bombs and rockets. Halabja is bombed by Iran, and then on 13 March the Iraqi government attacks the town with chemical weapons killing at least 5,000 civilians. Poor people attempting to flee the town for Iran before the massacre are stopped from doing so by Kurdish nationalist peshmerga. Throughout this period of insurgency there is widespread suspicion of the Kurdish nationalist parties because of their history of collaboration with the state and their lack of support for working class revolts.
In August Iran and Iraq agree a ceasefire bringing to an end the first Gulf War.

From 1982-1990, the US traded with Iraq, knowing all about Hussein's atrocities. These atrocities were referenced repeatedly as justification for war. Usually, the date and contest was left out, creating a perception that they wre recent and ongoing.

If those events were the reason why the US went to war in 2003, why didn't they even warrant trade sanctions at the time they happened? Also when the world became aware Hussein was using CWs on his own civilians, most nations imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. The US responded to the world wide trade embargo against Hussein by increasng trade to make up the difference. The US also sent intel to Iraq so they could use their CWs more effectively:

Published on Sunday, August 18, 2002 in the New York Times
Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas
by Patrick E. Tyler

WASHINGTON — A covert American program during the Reagan administration provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war, according to senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program.

Those officers, most of whom agreed to speak on the condition that they not be identified, spoke in response to a reporter's questions about the nature of gas warfare on both sides of the conflict between Iran and Iraq from 1981 to 1988. Iraq's use of gas in that conflict is repeatedly cited by President Bush and, this week, by his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, as justification for "regime change" in Iraq.

The covert program was carried out at a time when President Reagan's top aides, including Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci and Gen. Colin L. Powell, then the national security adviser, were publicly condemning Iraq for its use of poison gas, especially after Iraq attacked Kurds in Halabja in March 1988...

...In early 1988, after the Iraqi Army, with American planning assistance, retook the Fao Peninsula in an attack that reopened Iraq's access to the Persian Gulf, a defense intelligence officer, Lt. Col. Rick Francona, now retired, was sent to tour the battlefield with Iraqi officers, the American military officers said.

He reported that Iraq had used chemical weapons to cinch its victory, one former D.I.A. official said. Colonel Francona saw zones marked off for chemical contamination, and containers for the drug atropine scattered around, indicating that Iraqi soldiers had taken injections to protect themselves from the effects of gas that might blow back over their positions. (Colonel Francona could not be reached for comment.)

C.I.A. officials supported the program to assist Iraq, though they were not involved. Separately, the C.I.A. provided Iraq with satellite photography of the war front...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0818-02.htm

So we can pretty much rule out Iraq's use of CWs previous to 1988 as a justification for war. Obviously the Americans were OK with it. Lets put if this way, Hussein isn't the only one with blood on his hands from these events:

You can read all the dirty details here:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/husseinindex.htm

But suffice to say, the US didn't have any strong objections to Iraq's use of CWs on its civilians at the time:

In 1989 President George Herbert Walker Bush took power and ordered a review of United States policy toward Iraq. According to Power:

The study ... deemed Iraq a potentially helpful ally in containing Iran and nudging the Middle East peace process ahead. The "Guidelines for U.S.-Iraq Policy" swiped at proponents of sanctions on Capital Hill and a few human rights advocates who had begun lobbying within the State Department. The guidelines noted that despite support from the Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, and State Departments for a profitable, stable U.S.-Iraq relationship, "parts of Congress and the Department would scuttle even the most benign and beneficial areas of the relationship, such as agricultural exports." The Bush administration would not shift to a policy of dual containment of both Iraq and Iran. Vocal American businesses were adamant that Iraq was a source of opportunity, not enmity. The White House did all it could to create an opening for these companies"Had we attempted to isolate Iraq," Secretary of State James Baker wrote later, "we would have also isolated American businesses, particularly agricultural interests, from significant commercial opportunities."

http://hnn.us/articles/862.html

1990
In July Iraq invades Kuwait.
In February and March, popular uprisings against the Iraqi government spread across the country. It starts at Basra in southern Iraq, where the spark is rebels using a tank to fire at the huge pictures of Saddam Hussein in the city. Inspired by rebellion in the south, people in Kurdish areas join in. Police stations, army bases and other government buildings are wrecked and torched. Shops are looted. Food warehouses are occupied and the food distributed. In Sulliemania in the north, rebels smash up the prison and set all the prisoners free and then storm the secret police HQ where many have been tortured and killed. Baathist officials and secret police are shot. In some areas, self-organised workers' councils (shoras) are set up to run things. They set up their own radio stations, medical posts (to collect blood donations for the hospital), and militia to resist government forces.
In Baghdad itself, there are mass desertions from the main barracks during the war, with officers who try to stop them being shot. Two areas of the city, Al Sourah and Al Sho'ela fall into the effective control of deserters and their supporters.

After a brutal repression of the rebellion in the South, Government forces focus on Kurdistan. They reoccupy Sulliemania in April, but the city is deserted with almost all the inhabitants having fled to the mountains.

The Western media present the uprisings as the work of Kurdish nationalists in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south, but they are in fact mass revolts of the poor. In fact the main Kurdish nationalist parties (the KDP and the PUK) oppose radical aspects of the uprisings and try to destroy the shora movement. True to form they announce a new negotiated agreement with Saddam Hussein soon after the uprisings are crushed.

1998
On October 1, Iraqi authorities under the command of Gen. Sabah Farhan al-Duri execute 119 Iraqis and three Egyptians in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Twenty-nine of those killed are members of the armed forces, and fifty had been imprisoned for their participation in the March 1991 uprisings that followed the Gulf War. This mass execution is apparently a continuation of the "prison-cleansing" campaign launched by the government a year earlier which saw an estimated 2500 prisoners executed.

1999
In March Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq-al Sadr, the most senior Shi'ite religious leader in Iraq, is killed, with the suspicion falling on government agents. A major uprising in Basra is suppressed with hundreds of deaths, many killed in mass executions

The details of the 1991 Shiite rebellion in southern Iraq above pretty much explain why Hussein cracked down on them. Regardless of what Hussein did, thousands of people would die. The revolt was partly caused by US propaganda broadcasts into southern Iraq, to incite the revolt and promises of assistance.

...On Feb. 15, 1991, as the Desert Storm air campaign blasted Iraqi defenses in Kuwait, Bush flew to Andover, Mass., for a rally at the Raytheon plant, which manufactured the Patriot Air Defense System. In the middle of a rousing speech, he noted, almost as an aside, "There's another way for the bloodshed to stop, and this is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside."...

...It was the Shi'ites in southern Iraq and the Kurds in the north--both of whom had long been subjugated by Saddam--who took Bush's words to heart. They began their revolt on March 1, just one day after Bush halted the war. But Saddam's battered Republican Guard divisions in the south quickly refashioned themselves and attacked Shi'ite guerrillas. Meanwhile, in the north, several Iraqi divisions moved to crush the Kurdish rebellion. The U.S. inadvertently helped Saddam annihilate the rebels by agreeing in the cease-fire deal negotiated by General Norman Schwarzkopf to allow Iraqi generals to continue flying their helicopters--a mistake because Saddam then used them to strafe rebels on the ground...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1004633,00.html

...Voice of Free Iraq failed to overthrow Hussein, but its broadcasts resulted in real warfare for which Iraqis paid a real price. At least one high Clinton administration official is warning Radio Free Iraq backers not to continue to shelter such desires. "If you encourage, and almost incite, people to rise up against their government, you incur a moral obligation to come to their defence at moments of peril," Sandy Berger, national security advisor, cautioned recently.

Berger added that the 1991 Iraqi uprising was a case "where perhaps our rhetoric had gone ahead of what we were prepared to do."...
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/"RADIO+FREE+IRAQ".-a062926576

That's all I have time for now, but those of you who would like to debate this issue on either side are welcome to post on this string.

 

[einmensch]

Great summary!

 

[#juan]

It was a good summary.

I remember watching George Bush and Tony Blair trot out their dopey lies about all the "weapons of mass destruction" that Saddam Hussein was supposed to have. As it turned out, Saddam had a few rusting tanks left over from Desert Storm, no air force, and little else. What Bush and Blair weren't telling was that Iraq had been bombed almost daily since Desert Storm and the country's infrastructure was all but destroyed before the invasion.

 

[Avro]

Sane non idealogical people know that Iraq was an poorly planned illegal mistake which has ruined the Americans reputation and power around the globe while killing thousands and thousands of innocents, bankrupting a once rich nation and increasing the threat of terror.

Only a moron would now say it was the right thing to do.:roll: